Was Jan. 6 an insurrection or just a riot? Label fight rages a year after mob attacked U.S. Capitol
Ted Cruz and others call it a riot or terrorist attack, terms that Democrats view as tepid for an attempt to overthrow democracy on behalf of Donald Trump.

WASHINGTON One year after the worst attack on the U.S. Capitol since the War of 1812, disagreements rage. Who was responsible? How harshly should those involved be punished?

And, fundamentally, was it an insurrection?

Few Republicans are willing to characterize the events of Jan. 6 that way. The preferred term among defenders of Donald Trump is "riot." Texas Sen. Ted Cruz calls it a "violent terrorist attack."

On the left, it's an article of faith that the mob that swarmed the Capitol, encouraged by Trump that day to "fight like hell" to block certification of his defeat, wanted to overturn a fair election. Whether they had guns or not, they used plenty of makeshift weapons hockey sticks, bear spray, helmets and shields wrested away from outnumbered police.

That, by definition, is an insurrection a violent attempt to take control of the government.

"The biggest threat to our Capitol, to our Capitol Police and to our democracy is the Big Lie, perpetrated by Donald Trump," Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday at a hearing on Capitol security. "Without addressing the root causes of the events of January 6th, the insurrection will not be an aberration."
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One week after the attack, the House impeached Trump for "incitement of insurrection" on a 232-197 vote. All Democrats and 10 Republicans supported the resolution.
At Wednesday's hearing, Cruz who promoted Trump's never-proven assertions of fraud and led the effort, before and after the mob interrupted certification, to nullify millions of votes in states won by Joe Biden called Jan. 6 "a solemn anniversary … of a violent terrorist attack on the Capitol."
The Civil War, in which 600,000 Americans died, he said during a podcast last month "that was an insurrection. Really bad one. This was a riot."
Two conspiracy-minded Republicans and riot apologists, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Gaetz of Florida, scheduled a news conference Thursday "to expose the truth about the January 6, 2021 protests."
History will eventually judge whether Jan. 6 was a turning point for American democracy or more of an especially unpleasant aberration.
But in the short term, the fight over labels is anything but trivial.
If Republicans retake the House, they'll disband the committee probing Trump's culpability and the causes of the attack. The winner of the semantic tussle now will have the upper hand in the November midterm elections.
[url=https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2022/01/04/a-year-after-capitol-riot-texans-in-congress-reflect-on-a-tumultuous-day-in-us-political-history/][/url]
The linguistic tug-of-war also hangs over the 2024 race, with Cruz and other GOP presidential contenders already jockeying for position. National polls show that as few as one in four Republican voters say Biden won the election. So candidates who frame Jan. 6 as an effort to rectify an injustice are in sync with the base.
"I never thought I'd see a day like that. A violent mob, driven by the rhetoric and the lies of a disgraceful former president," Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, said during Wednesday's hearing with the Capitol Police chief. "They attacked our seat of government."

If Jan. 6 was an attempt to overthrow democracy, Trump is discredited. His defenders are covering up. Those who led the mob are seditionists and those who joined the mayhem, even if they showed up that day never dreaming they'd commit violence or maraud through the halls of Congress, are co-conspirators.
Hundreds of Jan. 6 participants have been charged with trespassing or assault, and the FBI is hunting for thousands more. None has been charged with insurrection against the government, or abetting insurrection, far more serious crimes that carry up to 10 years in prison.
'Violent affront'
That's how President Joe Biden views the attack, though.
He referred to "the violent and deadly insurrection" during a commencement address last month. At a Virginia campaign event in October, he asserted that Trump "drove a mob of insurrectionists to breach the Capitol on the 6th of January. And to this day, he incites people all around the country."
The Dallas Morning News asked every Texas Republican in Congress whether they view Jan. 6 as an insurrection. None responded directly. Through an aide, Rep. Michael McCaul of Austin called the events of that day "a devastating reminder of the division within our country," adding that law enforcement and intelligence agencies could have prevented "the violence and destruction" but for missteps and lack of planning.
For progressives and others, "insurrection" is the primary description.
"The insurrection was a violent affront to free and fair elections and the orderly transition of power," said Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause, a nonpartisan government accountability group.
"January 6th interrupted two centuries of the peaceful transfer of power. It was staged by a domestic enemy fueled by the lies fed by the former president, some Republican politicians, and their allies who tried to subvert a bedrock democratic principle: that voters decide elections," she said.
The Republican Accountability Project, an anti-Trump group, hit Cruz and others for backing away from their own comments early on, pinning blame for Jan. 6 squarely on Trump. A 30-second ad that will air Thursday on Fox News, CNN and other cable networks shows Cruz saying the day after the attack that "the president's language and rhetoric crossed a line and it was reckless."
There's a clip of House Republican leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy saying: "The president bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters." And another of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell weeks later, after the impeachment effort fell 10 votes short in the Senate, saying that "President Trump is responsible for provoking events of the day."
"Trump's election lies lit the fuse for that attack on our democracy. And yet, many Republicans are still trying to memory hole the attack for political gain," said Republican Accountability Project director Olivia Troye, a former aide to Vice President Mike Pence, the object of Trump's venom for refusing to use his ceremonial role on Jan. 6 to overturn the election. "It's not enough just to reject lies and conspiracy theories about January 6. We must demand accountability for those who caused it and those who have tried to apologize for or excuse the attempt to overturn the 2020 election."
Republicans have ostracized the two GOP House members who agreed to serve on the panel investigating the attack, Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.
Most downplay the events, often equating the violence to Black Lives Matter or Antifa protests during 2020.
For Democrats and others, that amounts to egregious "whataboutism," given that BLM and Antifa protests never imperiled the constitutional order.
"You do not overthrow the greatest republic history's ever known with flagpoles, mace and a stolen podium," freshman Texas Rep. Pat Fallon of Sherman told the rightwing One American News this week, adding that while Democrats "obsess over ... one riot that took four hours" but "whitewash" protests that swept through U.S. cities after a Minneapolis police officer killed an unarmed black man, George Floyd.
Cruz made much the same point at Wednesday's hearing.
"Regardless of the politics of the violent criminal whether they are rightwing, leftwing or they got no wings at all if you assault a cop, you ought to go to jail for a long, long time," he said. "That should be true regardless of the political context that ostensibly and purportedly justifies that violence."
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2022/01/05/was-jan-6-an-insurrection-label-fight-rages-a-year-after-mob-attacked-us-capitol/

Stop Calling Jan. 6 an 'Insurrection'
That's a legal term that denotes much more than a sporadically violent riot or disturbance.
The events of Jan. 6, 2021, are misunderstood, and the failure to correct the record could be damaging to both America's future and its justice system. Words have to have meaning, and the continuous mislabeling of the U.S. Capitol breach as an "insurrection" is an example of how a false narrative can gain currency and cause dangerous injustice.
Many crimes undoubtedly took place at the Capitol that day. Demonstrators rioted, destroyed government property and in some instances engaged in acts of violence. Many are charged with violating 18 U.S.C. 371, which makes it a crime "to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States," and with underlying charges of civil disorder, disorderly conduct, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, destruction of government property, and obstruction of an official proceeding.
These are important criminal charges that shouldn't go unaddressed. But of the hundreds of "Capitol Breach Cases" listed at the Justice Department's prosecution page, not one defendant is charged with insurrection under 18 U.S.C. 2383. That's because insurrection is a legal term with specific elements. No prosecutor would dare mislabel negligent homicide or manslaughter a murder, because they are totally distinct crimes. The media has no legal or moral basis to do otherwise.
The events of Jan. 6 also fail to meet the dictionary definition of insurrection, which Merriam-Webster defines as "an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government." A usage note adds that the term implies "an armed uprising that quickly fails or succeeds." A closely related term, "insurgency," is "a condition of revolt against a government that is less than an organized revolution and that is not recognized as a belligerency."
Other near synonyms include "rebellion," "revolution," "uprising," "revolt" and "mutiny." All require two elements, neither of which was present in the Jan. 6 breachthe organized use of violent force and the aim of replacing one government or political system with another.
A real insurrection would have required the armed forces to quell an armed resistance. Actual insurrectionsapart from the Civil War include Shay's Rebellion in 1787, in which thousands of insurrectionists tried to seize weapons from a Massachusetts armory after months of planning to overthrow the new revolutionary government, and the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794, in which 500 armed men attacked the home of a U.S. tax inspector in Western Pennsylvania. Both events required President Washington to quell the insurrections with thousands of armed troops, who killed several resistors.
The demonstrators who unlawfully entered the Capitol during the Electoral College count were unarmed and had no intention of overthrowing the U.S. constitutional system or engaging in a conspiracy "against the United States, or to defraud the United States." On the contrary, many of them believed however erroneously that the U.S. constitutional system was in jeopardy from voter fraud, and they desperately lashed out in a dangerous, reckless hysteria to protect that system.
The media's mischaracterization of these events created a moral panic that unfairly stigmatized Trump supporters across the nation as white supremacists conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government, resulting in the unnecessary mobilization of armed U.S. troops in Washington.
Those who violated the law inside the U.S. Capitol should be prosecuted and, if convicted, sentenced accordingly. But dramatizing a riot as an organized, racist, armed insurrection is false reporting and dangerous political gaslighting.
The misuse of words, especially involving criminal accusations, can easily result in overreaching enforcement of the law and a chilling effect on free speech, all of which have already happenedand in this case, endanger the very system the rioters' accusers purport to protect.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/stop-calling-jan-6-an-insurrection-capitol-riot-civil-disorder-insurgency-protest-first-amendment-11641417543?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

My unprofessional opinion:
1) From a legal standpoint the law as written doesn't specify well enough what it takes to meet the criteria. Absolutely agree with not bringing charges.

2) Two reasonable people could sit together over a beer and disagree over whether or not it met the definition as written by a few different dictionary sources and I could see valid points to both arguments and not feel that either was "clearly lying" in their belief.

In her remarks on the one-year anniversary of January 6th, Kamala Harris compares the day to Pearl Harbor and 9/11. pic.twitter.com/TI17jNfDfo

— MRCTV (@mrctv) January 6, 2022

December 7, 1941: 2,300 Americans killed
September 11, 2001: 3,000 Americans killed
January 6, 2021: 1 American killed (Ashli Babbitt) https://t.co/QgMqOxhkGi

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) January 6, 2022

Kamala Harris in Jan. 6 speech: "We must pass voting rights bills that are now before the Senate."

— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) January 6, 2022

The most accurate description (something along the lines of "violent riot") isn't even an option on this poll. This type of poor methodology leads to a "circling the wagons" effect that just spits out partisan results almost regardless of the question itself. https://t.co/PZ8SiPj313

— Noam Blum (@neontaster) January 6, 2022

If you read nothing else about 1/6/21 today, read this. It astutely balances strong condemnation of the riot that day with a clear-eyed assessment of how much of a danger it actually posed to our constitutional order. ⁦@AndrewCMcCarthy⁩ at his best. https://t.co/H2vDb7Kq19

— Brit Hume (@brithume) January 6, 2022

This is CNN...

Tomorrow is going to be a tough one for those of us who were there or had loved ones in the building. Thinking of all of you and finding strength knowing I’m not alone in this.

Thank God for the USCP, DC MPD, and every person who fought to keep us safe that day #January6th

— Kasie Hunt (@kasie) January 5, 2022

Jack Bauer said:

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Is everyone doing ok today? I know the MSM is literally shaking to remember this darkest day in history. Are you wearing all black to commemorate this anniversary today and every year until you die?

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I'm just waiting for January 20th, so I can go outside and scream at the sky

90sBear said:

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My unprofessional opinion:
1) From a legal standpoint the law as written doesn't specify well enough what it takes to meet the criteria. Absolutely agree with not bringing charges.

2) Two reasonable people could sit together over a beer and disagree over whether or not it met the definition as written by a few different dictionary sources and I could see valid points to both arguments and not feel that either was "clearly lying" in their belief.

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Agreed

This is what happens when you let yourself turn into an angry 62 year old lonely bitter liberal.

Maybe take up golf or something, Keith.

Real leadership from @POTUS in his 1/6 anniversary speech at this hour would be to call on Congress to pass the bill invoking the Insurrection provisions of the 14th Amendment to ban Trump, Gosar, Brooks, Boebert, Cruz and the other traitors from ever again holding public office. pic.twitter.com/xIt17Ony3D

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) January 6, 2022