The Wall Street Journal's Shameful J6 Propagandizing

From promoting the lie about Brian Sicknick's death to swooning over the J6 Select Committee while ignoring new findings about the events of Jan 6, the WSJ is soiling its once-solid reputation.

The January 6 narrative continues to crumble amid near-daily revelations related to, among other things, the shady circumstances surrounding the Jan 6 “pipe bomber,” the corruption of the January 6 Select Committee, and evidence directly contradicting the carefully fabricated storyline including who was responsible for delaying the deployment of National Guardsmen that afternoon. (Hint: Not Donald Trump.)

A few news and opinion outlets, however, remain stubbornly loyal to the regime-established Jan 6 propaganda mill. After years of investing ink and clicks to promote the most outlandish and in some instances debunked angles of the so-called “insurrection,” these outlets refuse to entertain the idea, now being considered by millions of Americans, that maybe they were snookered into believing one of the most destructive political hoaxes in U.S. history.

The Wall Street Journal is chief among them.

Once regarded a “conservative” paper with a news section largely devoted to the business sector and an editorial page section largely devoted to supporting conservative political causes, the WSJ currently rivals MSNBC and the Washington Post as the most hysterical J6 propagandists on record.

On Christmas Eve, the paper published a report authored by four WSJ reporters that named several companies who had pledged to withhold financial support for Trump and Republican lawmakers after the Capitol protest that now are donating to the president’s inaugural committee. Describing the events of January 6 as an “invasion” of the Capitol, the reporters lamented how “many of those pledges are a thing of the past.”

After Trump supporters invaded the Capitol in 2021 to protest the results of the presidential election, dozens of companies vowed to rethink their political contributions going forward. Some paused all donations. Others suspended donations to any lawmaker who voted against certifying the 2020 electoral college results. Some simply promised to factor integrity into their donation decisions going forward.

Now, as corporate executives hurry to make inroads with an incoming president whose agenda will have sweeping ramifications for the business world, many of those pledges are a thing of the past.

This latest installation of the WSJ’s “insurrection” chronicles follows a long arc of reporting and pontificating that began the day after the Capitol protest.

Lies About Cops and Lying Cops

On January 7, 2021, as the country knew few details about what actually happened, the WSJ’s editorial board called for President Trump to resign or face impeachment. “This was an assault on the constitutional process of transferring power after an election. It was also an assault on the legislature from an executive sworn to uphold the laws of the United States. This goes beyond merely refusing to concede defeat. In our view it crosses a constitutional line that Mr. Trump hasn’t previously crossed. It is impeachable,” the board, led by longtime “conservative” commentator Paul Gigot, wrote.

The next day, the paper helped fuel the lie that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was murdered by Trump supporters with a fire extinguisher, a falsehood first reported by the New York Times. The original WSJ article remains intact with a one-sentence correction from April 2021 admitting the D.C. coroner had concluded Sicknick died of natural causes. Nonetheless, the paper continued to describe Sicknick as a “slain” police officer.

A few months later, WSJ contributor Karl Rove—need I say more?—called the testimony of four police officers featured during the first televised hearing of the January 6 Select Committee “riveting” and how they “demolished claims by some Republicans that the assault on Congress wasn’t very different from a ‘normal tourist visit’ or a peaceful protest.”

But video evidence unearthed since that July 2021 hearing contradicts the accounts offered by all four officers under oath; some testimony could result in perjury charges. This appears to be of no interest to Rove or the WSJ in general.

Pelosi/Cheney Partner in Crime

To be fair, the WSJ criticized former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s heavy-handedness in creating the January 6 Select Committee, a body the WSJ supported in order to “get to the bottom of it all.” However, editors and columnists proceeded to fully participate in the committee’s media echo chamber. The evidence presented during the committee’s professionally scripted televised performances, the WSJ editorial board agreed in June 2022, represented “a reminder of the violence and how Trump betrayed his supporters.”

The following month, the paper’s editorial board regurgitated now-debunked accusations that Trump “stood still” and did nothing to prevent or halt the chaos on January 6. “No matter your views of the Jan. 6 special committee, the facts it is laying out in hearings are sobering. The most horrifying to date came Thursday in a hearing on President Trump’s conduct as the riot raged and he sat watching TV, posting inflammatory tweets and refusing to send help,” WSJ editors wrote in July 2022. Never mind the fact the president had urged the deployment of National Guardsmen days before the certification vote then posted tweets and a personal video asking for calm within the scope of a few hours that day.

WSJ Hearts Cassidy

But perhaps nothing can top the WSJ’s swooning over Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide considered the committee’s star witness. Her June 2022 testimony, the editorial board insisted in a cringe-worthy rant, represented the committee’s “accumulating evidence of [Trump’s] conduct” on January 6. “Republicans should [not[ look away from the considerable evidence it is producing about Mr. Trump’s behavior that would surely be relevant to voters if he runs in 2024.”

Former Reagan speechwriter and Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferer Peggy Noonan completely humiliated herself with a lengthy ode to Hutchinson, whom Noonan claimed was the sort of courageous gal that “can upend empires.” The young aide, Noonan continued, “showed more guts than any of Trump’s men. Her testimony strengthens the case for prosecution.”

Doubts over her testimony should be challenged, Noonan argued. “If she lied I see no motive. Any who know otherwise, who can rebut what she said, should come forward and, like her, testify under oath.”

Which is precisely what happened. In the months following Hutchinson’s testimony, several individuals directly refuted under oath her accounts of Trump’s behavior. Transcripts recently obtained by Representative Barry Loudermilk, chairman of a House subcommittee investigating the J6 committee and events of January 6, show that several witnesses including the driver of the presidential limousine told committee investigators and former Rep. Liz Cheney, Hutchinson’s hand holder, that Hutchinson’s allegations were untrue particularly related to an alleged physical confrontation inside the vehicle.

No Interest in Covering the Unraveling J6 Narrative

But unfortunately, the WSJ does not share the same interest in Loudermilk’s committee as it did in the Jan 6 select committee. Despite uncovering shocking proof of malfeasance and potential crimes committed by members of the Jan 6 select committee, including Cheney, Loudermilk hasn’t received any coverage in the WSJ.

The paper appears to have ignored a separate report issued earlier this month by Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz confirming the presence of at least 26 FBI informants in Washington on January 6. Nor is the paper interested in the ever-changing story about the “pipe bombs” allegedly planted near the headquarters of the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee on January 5, 2021; the last time the WSJ published anything about the explosives was more than 2 ½ years ago.

Even more inexcusable is the paper’s selective ignorance on the abusive treatment of January 6 protesters. One would be hard pressed to find any mention of how the Biden DOJ weaponized federal law to criminalize political protest or how the FBI has conducted hundreds of predawn armed raids for even nonviolent offenders or how federal prosecutors seek excessive prison time including “terror enhancements” for J6ers.

Instead, some WSJ writers now oppose Trump’s plans to pardon the wrongly accused and victims of a double standard of justice. Issuing pardons of J6ers, political columnist William Galston recently opined, would represent a “misread[ing]” of Trump’s decisive victory. “Two-thirds of Americans polled by the Washington Post would oppose issuing pardons for people convicted of crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol,” Galston wrote, as if public opinion should dictate how the inarguable abuse of the legal and judicial system must be resolved.

Another shameful example of the WSJ excusing away the government’s political persecution of Trump supporters while continuing to promote nonsensical aspects of January 6. What a fall from grace.