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Closure: What I Know About the Jan. 6 Insurrection [1]

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Date: 2025-01-26

I’m writing this diary to try and find closure on the gaping wound that is the unaccounted crime against the nation of the Jan. 6 insurrection, and the never-identified conspiracy to overthrow my country’s Presidential election and place the nation under a dictatorship. I doubt I will ever find that closure, but presenting the following points which have not been anywhere-near-adequately discussed in the public sphere is my best attempt.

Without any further preliminaries, here they are.

#1. The Proud Boys did have a plan to storm the Capitol.

I’ll substantiate this point. But first, the reason it is important is that although the DOJ convicted Proud Boys leadership for sedition, they did so without presenting any evidence of an actual plan by their members to storm the Capital. The DOJ never showed a conspiracy even at the level of the Proud Boys. This might explain why they were unable to convict (or, except for Trump, even to indict) anyone above that level: they had a gaping hole in their evidence.

But the Proud Boys did have a plan.

I know this because I saw a video online, sometime over the last 4 years, of the Proud Boys marching toward the Capitol that morning. In the video, one of them shouted something along the lines of, “Storm the Capital!” Another said, “Hey, how about we not yell that, ok?” A third one said, “Don’t yell it. Do it!”

That is evidence of a plan.

If you’re wondering about a link to the video: I’m sorry, but I don’t wish to poison my mind anymore by trying to find it. It’s possible it was from the “We Are Proud Boys” documentary footage, but I’m not sure. If one of you know, please mention it in the comments, and I’ll happily update. But all I want to do in this post is say what I know.

Speaking of what I know:

I also know how the Proud Boys operated that day. Rather than wearing their recognizable Proud Boys black-and-yellow shirts, they simply wore regular clothes, and red MAGA caps turned backwards. This obviously served as a means for them to recognize each other while blending in with the crowd. Again, I know this because I read where one of them said as much—either after the attack, or possibly before. (Without saying their intention.) In addition, I also remember early in the days after the attack, reading a (MAGA) account from a rally attendee, where the writer (a woman) described seeing people she claimed were “Antifa” wearing brand-new, backward-turned MAGA caps and stoking the crowd to attack the Capital. She thought Antifa was to blame. Bless her heart. Her account was exactly right, except that it was Proud Boys, not Antifa.

I’m sure I read her account somewhere on redstate.com. But again, I don’t wish to spend another second of my life searching for it right now. I am just saying what I know, to get it out there, because it seems no one else has.

#2 The bombs were not intended to go off. This means they were intended as distraction only, and makes the discoverers of the bombs key figures in the investigation.

This one, I have a link for, because I’ve written about it previously.

The bombs were constructed with a 1-hour kitchen timer. One hour. Since they were planted in the middle of the night, they were either intended to go off also in the middle of the night—unlikely—or they were not intended to go off at all. Rather, their purpose was to accomplish exactly what did happen, which was to be discovered, pull security away, and cause distraction and confusion, precisely when the attack was starting.

The key point here is that it indicates, again, a coordinated attack. Not just a random riot.

(To be clear, a conspiracy rather than a spontaneous riot should have been the obvious most-likely conclusion even given just the basic facts of the event. But these key facts make it even more clear.)

However, there is an important secondary point, which is that the discovery and report of the bombs at a specific time now becomes a necessary part of the plan. This implicates those who reported the bombs as either being a part of the conspiracy themselves, or perhaps unknowingly interacting with someone who was part of it. (In other words, a scenario where a conspirator said “Oh no, look under that bush—bombs!” at the required time with others in earshot, then ran off, and some other random person phoned it in.)

Sadly, the link above indicates that, some years after the attack, it was not clear if the FBI had yet interviewed the discover-er for at least one of the two bombs.

(And people assured us the DOJ was doing a great investigation.)

That’s the info I wanted to present. But one final word.

Failure resulted from focusing on the wrong thing.

Although many are frustrated with the DOJ’s failure to hold Trump accountable in this matter, I have found myself uniquely frustrated by the DOJ’s broader failure to simply identify and present publicly the nature of the conspiracy. This is a topic the DOJ seems to show little interest in, and few commenters that I have seen show any interest in it either. Everyone simply focuses on “Get Trump!”, when what I want is for the crime to be solved, and details made public as to what was done and by whom.

Here are some examples of what I mean:

Jack Smith had six unindicted co-conspirators in his indictment of Trump for election interference. He never showed any interest in indicting them.

We still have little knowledge of whether any aspect of the attack, such as the reduced security presence, slow response, or key knowledge potentially passed to the attackers, was an inside job.

Jack Smith’s final report on that investigation is 174 pages long. His discussion of the Jan. 6 attack is 10 pages—double-spaced, with much of the space going to references, and including 3 pages of photographs. It’s a quick read. It contains no significant new information.

His report does not mention the bomb attack.

Marcy Wheeler, “independent journalist”, over the last four years presented herself as an expert on this investigation. She has written thousands, and thousands, and yet more thousands, of words on the Jan. 6 conspiracy (generally defending the work of the DOJ and its AG). In those words, she never mentioned the bomber or the bombs. Not once. (Do a key-word search on her site.)

I am not a DOJ investigator. I am not even an independent journalist. I just sat here for four years doing my actual job, while watching from behind my keyboard as my country failed.

Perhaps one day, I’ll find closure.

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