I said it right after the event; everyone can look up all the videos and see what I wrote then.  I always said that the January 6^th incident in 2021, when people were upset at election fraud and stormed the Capitol Building, had to happen.  I didn’t understand why everyone made such a big deal about it.  After all, there was a government that just stole an election to perform a coup against President Trump, and they thought they were going to get away with it like some backwoods third-world armpit of a country.  A certain percentage of the population needed to express their anger in some way, and in this case, it was by letting the government know that the people’s house was theirs and that they could take it back if they wanted to.  Now, there are all kinds of things wrong with that day, especially among the 26 FBI agents who spread out through the massive crowd around the Capitol to bait people to break the law so that they could call the whole thing an insurrection so that they could blame Trump for it and in the process, destroy his political life from then on.  When a massive crowd showed up to hear with some hope, Trump’s last speech to them ahead of certifying the election results, the FBI, in coordination with Nancy Pelosi and others, plotted with some bait to push these angry people into a collective action that they could use to club the MAGA movement over the head and deter any further protests against the government coup.  And some people broke windows and acted in a manner that I would never do.  And a few people died and got hurt.  But my attitude about it all then and now was, what did anybody expect to happen?  The government stole an election and took away a president people liked.  They were lucky that was all that happened, “they” being the government.

So it had to happen that Trump pardoned all the poor people who were thrown in jail for the last four years just over a government trying hard to stay in power through intimidation and force.  When the government breaks the law and controls how the law is interpreted, you cannot have a civil society if law enforcement doesn’t enforce the law but provokes themselves into breaking the law and uses the law to cover up their crimes, which was what happened on January 6^th, 2021.  We have a Constitution that limits the power that government has, especially specified in the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments, and the January 6^th prisoners had all those rights violated unjustly.  Their due process was deliberately violated, and what was done to them was completely unforgivable.  Law enforcement should expect people to fight back if they violate the protections people have from an out-of-control government.  Democrats have been saying that Trump should have never released with a pardon most of the J6 prisoners because they assaulted police officers.  But when police officers break the law or the enemy captures your legal society, what are you supposed to do?  The plan by the government was to capture our legal system and then break laws by controlling the enforcement.  And they thought nothing of using the January 6^th incident to put people in jail to send a message to the rest of the country that if they were thought to be involved, even remotely, in a plot against the corrupt government, they would have their rights taken away from them and would be jailed as a message to the rest of the world.  It was nasty stuff.

I would never do anything like the J6 protestors did.  I would fight it out in court.  As much as it is fun to fight back and even justified, I do much better with my mouth than any other method, and I would use it instead of violence.  I’ve been in enough of those things to know that my mouth is the best weapon against corrupt people who aren’t nearly as smart.  I had a lot of talks with people who wanted a lot more violence that day.  I even took serious steps to join the Proud Boys after the stolen election in 2020, so I know those guys pretty well.  It didn’t work out; I’m too cerebral to march around in a pack of volunteer ground troops. I wanted to join to help to lead them to good things.  Not to be just another face in the crowd.  So it didn’t come together, me joining the Proud Boys.  But that’s how it was after the election, and I had to explain to many people that the best way to club these people over the head is with lawfare of their own.  Trump understood that even if he knew what the government was doing was wrong, he had to follow the rules to later enforce the rules.  A lot of the reason things are working so well now is because Trump played by the rules, and the people elected him back to office.   We all had to thread the needle pretty well to get to this period because there were a lot of people who wanted open violence and another Civil War against the government, and I can say I did all I could to maintain peace during this challenging time.  But many people were ready to fight, so the government was lucky that all that happened was all that happened. 

Anybody in law enforcement has to understand that if they take orders from the bad guys, we don’t have a blank check society that is going to take it.  We give law enforcement the authority to be treated with respect.  But it’s on them if they lose that respect through improper behavior.  I can say this: I served this past year as a Forman of a Grand Jury, and we did a couple of cases where the police abused their authority in collecting evidence for an arrest.  I could see from the testimony that the police officers were frustrated with their investigation into a drug house.  They knew the criminals were dirty, so they pulled a couple of them over for an improperly functioning turn signal.  And in the process, they found all the drugs and evidence they needed to make the arrest.  Well, most of the members of the grand jury did not agree with me, and they moved not to indict because they didn’t like to see an abuse of authority by the cops to use a traffic stop to make a significant drug bust.  I was disappointed, but I understood their reasoning.  Respect for the law is the only way to keep our society functioning.  But when the bad guys capture your law and order society and attempt to hide crimes behind their control of the system, don’t expect people to put up with it.  And that was undoubtedly the plan behind J6.  I would say that the government was lucky they got away with not having more violence applied to them.  If law enforcement seeks to abuse the law, they should expect the public to get angry and respond.  We don’t expect to respect the law and authority no matter what.  However, we give away that privilege to law enforcement on a conditional basis, and that contract is to keep their powers limited by the Constitution.  Suppose they violate that contract, as they did over the stolen election in 2020? In that case, people will take action to restore those limited powers to the theater of expectation.  And the government should be happy that more people didn’t lash out than they did.  I would do it differently, but I understood their reasoning, like those grand jury members I mentioned.  And that is certainly the case with the J6 prisoners.  They should have never spent one day in jail.  Who is going to give them back their lives?  President Trump was very correct in getting them out of jail.  Because if he didn’t, our legal system would be much less effective if we let such an injustice loose to maintain a polite society.  No, we must do what’s right, even if things get a little pushy.  The J6 prisoners had every right in the world and an expectation to do what they did.  The government broke the law and used it to hide major, massive crimes.  And they are lucky that they are still around to have a legal discussion.  It could have been much worse.

Rich Hoffman

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