Insurrection? Riot? Iowa Republicans See Nothing To Recall, Regret
As far as trump is concerned, there is no reason to honor Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died as a result of the Jan. 6, 2021, rebellion by trump supporters.
Sicknick died on Jan. 7, 2021, after suffering two strokes the day after he responded to the attack on the Capitol. The District of Columbia chief medical examiner found that the violence of the day contributed to his having the strokes. Sicknick’s remains were buried with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery.
In trump world, there will be no respecting the solemn day, three years ago, that claimed the lives of four protesters, injured scores more and left 138 police officers bruised and battered while five officers who served at the capitol that day died in the days and weeks after the bloodiest assault on the nation’s capitol since the War of 1812.
Trump will cravenly be begging for votes when he holds a rally on Jan. 6 in advance of the crucial, Jan.15 caucus in Iowa.
Trump came in second behind Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in the 2016 Iowa primary but is considered far ahead in the current race, which is the first political contest in the nation for the 2024 primary race. In the 2016 general election, trump won Iowa with 51.15 percent of the vote and was the first Republican to carry the state since George w. Bush in 2004. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 performance in Iowa was the worst performance for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1980.
Showing respect has never been a trump trait, as when he mocked Vietnam War hero and longtime, prisoner of war, Sen. John McCain. In July 2015, during his campaign for the presidency, trump said that McCain, an outspoken critic, “was not a war hero, he’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t. captured, okay? I hate to tell you.” That from a man who managed to avoid the draft five times because he was in college and had bad feet.
And there was the dreadful moment at a 2015 rally in South Carolina when trump waved his arms wildly, mocking a reporter, Serge Kovaleski, who suffered from a congenital joint condition and had not written glowingly about trump.
The coming rally is planned for Newton, Iowa, a town with 15,750 residents in equally tiny Jasper County, with 37,813 residents. Newton is the home of the Iowa Speedway and was formerly home of the Maytag Washing Machine Co. The town gained notoriety in 1938 when martial law was declared during a strike at the company. The National Guard arrived with tanks and machine guns ready against the workers leading to a victory by the company and the union agreement to a 10 percent pay cut. The Maytag plant officially ended production on Oct. 25, 2007. Newton also was in the news on Aug. 31, 1969, when World boxing champ Rocky Marciano died when his plane crashed in Newton. The town also is twinned with Smila, Cherkasy Oblast, in Ukraine.
Trump most certainly needed the support of Iowa Republican Party state national officials to hold the rally on Jan. 6. One supporter was Thad Nearmyer, a farmer who is little known outside of Jasper County, where Nearmyer is chairman of the county Republican Committee.
Either Nearmyer was being incredibly disingenuous or he was just being a colossal jerk when he said this week, “When they first announced it was on Jan. 6, I didn’t even think anything of it. And then a little bit later it kind of occurred to me that that date has some significance. “
There are at least six Iowans who would disagree with Nearmyer’s depiction of Jan. 6, 2021, as having “some significance.”
The six Iowans were charged in relation to the riot and include Doug Jensen, 42, of Des Moines, who was seen on video at the head of a crowd pursuing a lone Capitol Police officer up a flight of stairs inside the building. Jensen has admitted to being a “true believer” in the QAnon conspiracy theory, which claimed that trump was executing a secret plan to rid the government and elite society of child sex traffickers. Jensen was convicted of seven federal charges and was sentenced to five years in prison.
Leo Kelly, a 37-year-old technology executive from Cedar Rapids, said he’d been in the Capitol for 30 to 60 minutes and had prayed inside the Senate chamber. Kelly was indicted for obstructing an official proceeding, entering a restricted building, parading or demonstrating in a Capitol building, two disorderly conduct charges and two charges for entering certain parts of the Capitol.
Kelly was sentenced to 30 months in prison, 36 months of supervised release, and ordered to pay $7,000 in restitution and fines. Kelly was one of the few rioters who breached the Senate Chamber and went to the Senate Dais where he leafed through and took photos of sensitive documents.
Deborah Sandoval, 55, of Des Moines and her son Salvador, 24, of Ankeny attended the riot together. Both posted photos or video on social media of themselves inside the Capitol and as Salvador allegedly shoved and tried to take a shield away from police officers inside the building.
Deborah Sandoval pleaded guilty to entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds. She was sentenced to five months in prison. Her son was sentenced to 88 months in prison, 36 months of supervised release, and ordered to pay $2,000 in restitution. Salvador Sandoval was found guilty of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers for assaulting Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers; one count of obstruction of an official proceeding; and one count of civil disorder.
Kyle Young, 38, an HVAC worker from Redfield, attended the riot with his 16-year-old son. He was accused of taking part in the beating of D.C. Metropolitan Police officer Michael Fanone and of trying to take his service weapon away from him. Fanone, who suffered a heart attack after being repeatedly shocked with his own Taser in the attack, later identified Young from a lineup as “the one who had his hand on his gun and threatened to kill him with it.”
Young was sentenced to 86 months in prison, after he admitted that he used a strobe light to disorient police, helped throw a large audio speaker at police, grabbed Fanone’s wrist when the mob abducted Fanone and made contact with another officer abducted by the mob.
Daryl Johnson, 51, of St. Ansgar and his son, Daniel, 29, of Austin, Minn., were both arrested in June. Both claimed that any damage from the riot had been caused by “Antifa” and that the crowd had been peaceful until police attacked with tear gas and other munitions. They were each charged with civil disorder, entering a restricted building, parading or demonstrating in a Capitol building and two disorderly conduct charges.
Daryl Johnson was sentenced to one month in jail and his son was sentenced to four months.
“Mark my words yesterday will be the beginning of the revolution . . . . what happens when those same people decide to throw out the ‘elected officials,’” Daniel Johnson wrote, while his father wrote on Facebook, “It’s going to get very ugly and probably result in some version of a civil war.”
Trump hasn’t commented on why he picked Jan. 6 for a campaign rally but he is evidently trying to minimize the day, for which he has been indicted for triggering the riot. Trump has consistently claimed the insurrection was over-hyped by the media and by Democrats, that it probably involved antifa provocateurs and that he did not instigate the riot but was simply trying to show that the election had been rigged with widespread fraud. None of his claims have been backed up by facts.
Unlike Democrats, Iowa Republicans have never been convinced that the insurrection was a threat to democracy. A November 2021 Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll showed that 93 percent of Iowa Democrats described Jan. 6 as “an insurrection and a threat to democracy,” but just 20 percent of Republicans said the same. A total of 36 percent of Iowa Republicans believed the riot was a protected political protest, and 32 percent said it was nothing to worry about anymore.
Trump has gotten support from many Republicans, most cynically by one of his leading sycophants, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who agreed with trump’s claim that the president is immune from prosecution because he acted within his duty as president.
Before the riot, trump tweeted his millions of supporters to descend on Washington, D.C. for Jan. 6, promising: “It will be wild.” He told the crowd gathered near the Capitol the day of the insurrection to “fight like hell,” and repeated his baseless claims of widespread fraud in the election.
Shortly after the riot, Graham said trump’s actions in exhorting the mob to attack the Capitol would be subject to the “law of the land” and that he could be prosecuted after leaving office.
What a difference two years makes. On Sunday, Graham was questioned on “Face the Nation” and the senator hedged and double-talked his way through.
“Do you stand by that statement that Mr. Trump could be prosecuted and criminally liable?” Brennan asked Graham.
“It depends on what the conduct is,” Graham said. “If you’re doing your job as president — and Jan. 6 he was still president — trying to find out if the election, you know, was on the up and up, I think his immunity claim — I don’t know how it will bear out — but I think it’s a legitimate claim. “(trump) didn’t break into the capitol.”
Graham said Trump’s tirade before the riot was merely “fiery speech” and that “he’s not the first guy to ever do that.”
Iowa’s Republican state and federal lawmakers have been silent about trump’s plan to rally on the anniversary of the abortive coup or his role in the violence. But they were certainly vocal in the days and weeks after the attack and during last year’s anniversary.
The rally location in Newton, Iowa, is in the 2nd Congressional District, represented by Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks. At the time of the riot, Miller-Meeks tweeted that “storming government buildings and attacking law enforcement officers is unacceptable.”
Miller-Meeks stood out in the Republican delegation as the only Iowan to vote to establish the commission to investigate the storming of the Capitol. Miller-Meeks also said she had received “credible death threats” after she pulled her support from Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, for speaker of the House.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, at 88 the senior senator in the nation, said the attack on the Capitol “was an attack on American democracy itself. I condemn today’s violence in the strongest terms & perpetrators deserve to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” After the attack, Grassley said that trump “displayed poor leadership in his words and actions, and he must take responsibility.”
Grassley had some of the harshest words for trump, saying on Oct. 19, 2021, “The reality is, he lost. He brought over 60 lawsuits and lost all but one of them. He belittled and harassed elected officials across the country to get his way. He encouraged his own, loyal vice president, Mike Pence, to take extraordinary and unconstitutional actions during the Electoral College count.”
But Grassley sought re-election in 2022 and heeded trump’s endorsement. In May 2021, Grassley voted against impeaching trump and later voted against creating an independent commission to investigate the attack. Later that year, Grassley campaigned with trump, won trump’s endorsement and was reelected to his eighth Senate term.
“I was born at night, but not last night,” Grassley said following trump’s announced endorsement. “So if I didn’t accept the endorsement of a person that’s got 91 percent of the Republican voters in Iowa, I wouldn’t be too smart. I’m smart enough to accept that endorsement.”
Sen. Joni Ernst tweeted “What’s happening at the Capitol right now is not peaceful nor a protest. It’s anarchy, & a betrayal of the American ideals we all hold dear.” Before the riot, Ernst was a staunch trump supporter. In 2020, she voted to acquit trump on articles of impeachment lodged after trump allegedly tried to strong arm the president of Ukraine to find political dirt on Joe Biden or face a cutoff in military support.
Trump was charged with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Ernst said trump had learned his lesson, and that he would not ask a foreign leader to investigate his rivals again without going through the proper channels.
Ernst also voted against creating an independent commission to investigate the Capitol attack. She also said in a sworn affidavit during her divorce proceedings that she had declined trump’s offer to be his 2020 vice-presidential running mate.
Rep. Ashley Hinson tweeted “No matter the circumstance, this kind of violence & behavior is unacceptable. I don’t believe this is who we are as a nation, & I hope we can come together to heal the divisions gripping our country right now. Thank you to the law enforcement officers keeping us safe.” Hinson also called on trump to “address the nation and call for an end to this violence.”
Hinson voted against a congressional commission to investigate the Capitol attack.
Rep. Randy Feenstra tweeted “It’s every American’s right to protest peacefully. Violence is never the answer…The world is watching.”
Rep. Zachary Martin Nunn was elected last year, and was endorsed by trump. He denigrated the investigation by the House committee probing the insurrection and said it was a “Nancy Pelosi committee determined to find someone that they can hang a noose around.”
Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds tweeted “This behavior is unacceptable and not who we are as Americans.”
Iowa state GOP Chairman Jeff Kaufmann tweeted that “We are the Party of law and order. This is NOT a peaceful protest.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called it a “failed insurrection,” said that “the mob was fed lies,” and that trump was “practically and morally responsible for provoking the event of that day.”
On the first anniversary of the rioting at the Capitol, the Iowan congressional delegation recalled the day with a moment of silence for Capitol police officers who were injured or killed on Jan. 6, 2021.
Miller-Meeks thanked the Capitol police officers who defended the Capitol and promised to continue to support them. Hinson condemned the violence, calling the events of Jan. 6 “horrific.” Feenstra said in a statement that the anniversary should not be “a day for partisan bickering or finger pointing.”
Grassley tweeted that Jan. 6 was “a difficult day” and that “we need to focus on issues that bring our country together not tear us apart.”