WorldNetDaily columnist Jack Cashill is working on a new book whitewashing the participants in the Capitol riot and demonizing those in law enforcement who defended the Capitol against them, and we’ve seen his work on that front in previous columns. He served up another effort on that front in his March 20 column, making sure to play the sympathy card by calling her a “great-grandma”:
This past Saturday I had the honor of hosting a small fundraiser for Rebecca Lavrenz, one of the 10 women I am profiling in my upcoming book, “Ashli: The Untold Story of the Women of January 6.”
Rebecca and her daughter Jennifer stopped by Kansas City where I live on their way to Washington, D.C. If the Sixth Amendment still holds in the district, “an impartial jury” will decide whether Rebecca is guilty of the misdemeanors with which she is charged.
Rebecca faces many of the standard J6 charges: disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly conduct in a Capitol Building or grounds; and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol Building.
There is no dispute as to what Rebecca did to earn these charges. On Jan. 4, 2021, she left her Colorado Springs home and drove 1,600 or so miles to D.C. by herself, arriving on the evening of Jan. 5.
On Jan. 6, at 2:43 p.m., this devoutly Christian great-grandmother entered the Capitol through a door on the more orderly east side of the building that had been opened from within.
“I went to pray for my country,” Rebecca told me. She did just that for 12 minutes before exiting the building. Although fellow protester Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed while she was in the building, Rebecca saw no violence or vandalism.
Rebecca’s trial begins on Monday, March 25. She was offered a plea deal but refused to testify falsely against herself. Said Rebecca, “I didn’t do anything wrong!”
If there is “no dispute as to what Rebecca did to earn these charges,” then Lavrenz should not be fighting the charges and instead admit guilt. Instead, Cashill helps her play victim by repeating the right=wing lament that right-wing insurrectionists can’t get a fair trial in the District of Columbia:
Rebecca, of course, knows the Sixth Amendment holds no purchase in the district. “IMPOSSIBLE to get a fair trial in Washington, D.C., which is over 95% anti-Trump, & for which I have called for a Federal TAKEOVER in order to bring our Capital back to Greatness,” Trump posted on Truth Social in August 2023.
Trump was not exaggerating. In 2016. Hillary Clinton may not have won the states of Wisconsin or Michigan, but she crushed Trump in the District of Columbia.
In fact, Hillary was the first presidential candidate ever to win more than 95% of the district’s two-party votes. Trump received just 4%. In 2020, incumbent President Trump upped his total, but only to 5%. Of the 50 states, by contrast, none gave Trump less than 30% of the vote.
Given their historic commitment to justice, one would think that the stacking of these juries would upset self-professed liberals. In fact, that commitment has always been more imagined than real.
Cashillis being deliberately obtuse. He knows full well that an entire population doesn’t sit in judgment of a defendant, 12 jurors do. As we pointed out when another WND writer made this false argument, there is a jury selection process,and both the prosecution and defense lawyers, as well as the judge, will screen jurors and try to eliminate those who they believe cannot be impartial. Merely living in a particular city is not evidence that a prospective juror cannot be partial.
Cashill then turned to whitewashing the riot itself:
On the first anniversary of January 6, for instance, all 51 ACLU chapters signed on to the kind of letter the ACLU chapter of ancient Rome might have written about the Vandals or the Visigoths.
“On January 6 of last year, the residents of D.C. were traumatized as an insurrectionist mob roamed our streets, harassed our neighbors, and violently broke into the Capitol Building, killing at least five people – all in an attempt to overthrow the counting of American citizens’ votes.”
The only thing the ACLU got right in this letter was the date. There was no insurrection. No one roamed the streets or harassed neighbors. Like Rebecca, the great majority of protesters walked into the Capitol through open doors, prayed or took selfies, and left peacefully.
Then too, the only killing that day was done by the Capitol Police. As to the five dead officers, one died of a stroke unrelated to his experience on January 6, and four others committed suicide over the next seven months.
For the last three years, judges have been repeating this same outrageous “five killed” lie before juries, which may help explain why no jury has acquitted a J6 defendant. Nor has any judge granted a single defendant a change of venue away from this deeply propagandized hell hole.
Ironic that a deeply propagandized writer like Cashill would accuse others of being “deeply propagandized.” He also offered no evidence that judge has reference the “outrageous ‘five killed’ lie before juries” — in fact, a medical examiner ruled that “all that transpired” that day contributed to officer Brian Sicknick’s stroke-related death the day after the riot, and at least one other officer’s post-riot death was ruled to be in the line of duty. Cashill also failed to mention that one key reason “no jury has acquitted a J6 defendant” is that their crimes were captured on video for all to see, including those of Lavrenz.
Cashill concluded with one more stab at making his defendant look sympathetic:
If found guilty, Rebecca could be looking at $210,000 in fines and a year in prison. Yet she remains stubbornly and prayerfully optimistic. Guided by an inner light, this charmingly defiant great-grandmother may be the woman destined to alert the willfully ignorant to the greatest mass injustice against American citizens since Japanese internment.
Cashill is simply lying at this point. There is no injustice here — he even admitted earlier in his column that “There is no dispute as to what Rebecca did to earn these charges.” Lavrenz committed a crime and it was captured on video, and Cashill even concedes the crime — which blows up his ludicrous comparison of her case to Japanese internment.
A few weeks after Cashill’s column appeared, Lavrenz was indeed found guilty of charges related to her participation in the riot; given that there’s no evidence she engaged in violent behavior, it’s unlikely she will face the full “$210,000 in fines and a year in prison” Cashill fearmongers about. Lavrenz, meanwhile, is fully engaged in her own victimhood narrative, ranting after the verdict: “They are trying to stop our voices, put fear in our hearts and take away inalienable rights given to us by God. But I will not let that happen to this praying great-grandma as long as I have breath.”