Thursday, July 29, 2021 9:39 AM
By BRIAN A. HOWEY
INDIANAPOLIS – One thing that stood out after the Capitol and D.C. Metro police testimony Tuesday before the fledgling House Jan. 6 Select Committee was how close this “insurrection” came to being an atrocity that could have ignited a violent nationwide spasm. D.C. Officer Daniel Hodges, who repeatedly referred to those breaching the U.S. Capitol as “terrorists,” was asked why police didn’t use their guns to stop the breach. There were “thousands of terrorists … only hundreds of us,” Hodges said. “If it had turned into a firefight, we would’ve lost.”
That was a chilling revelation. There were five deaths on Jan. 6, including two supporters of President Trump and three Capitol officers who died (two by suicide in its aftermath). There had been only one shot fired, by an unidentified Capitol defender, killing Ashli Babbitt of California as she attempted to jump through an interior Capitol window. Trump has elevated her death to martyrdom.
Dozens of videos compiled by the committee and news organizations such as the New York Times revealed many insurrectionists were heavily armed – with body armor, bear spray and other chemicals, and weaponry. The U.S. was facing a constitutional crisis as Trump sought to “overturn” the election and stop congressional certification of the Electoral College declaring Joe Biden the winner on Jan. 6.
It would be difficult to gauge how a gunfight in the halls and entry steps to the Capitol could have been a total rupture of the civic dynamic, potentially sending thousands of Trump supporters and opponents into the streets of American cities. For that restraint alone, the cops defending the Capitol should have a revered place in our history.
Officer Hodges’ testimony mentioned “terrorists” 15 times and he was pressed by U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin as to why. Hodges said that he came “prepared” to explain why he uses the term to describe the rioters. Hodges then recited how U.S. criminal codes describe “domestic terrorism.”
“U.S. Code title 18 part 1 chapter 1.1.3, B as in brown, section 2.3.3.1. The term domestic terrorism means activities that involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any state and B, appeared to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, or to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping and occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.”