Newsmax columnist Michael Dorstewitz has been doing his right-wing part to downplay the Capitol riot and its aftermath. He has tried to portray a riot participant as a victim because she is facing consequences for her actions, and he repeated a false claim that the House committee examining the riot deliberately hid testimony by a witness who was a Secret Service agent from a group of Republicans attacking the committee (in fact, the testimony was withheld (in fact, the Secret Service had the final say on whether that testimony would be released).
Dorstewitz spent his April 19 column cheering that a claim that some riot participants committed obstruction made it to the Supreme Court. He describe petitioner Joseph Fischer as merely a “former Pennsylvania police officer”; in fact, prosecutors said that Fischer had a physical encounter with police at the Capitol, urged on rioters during the Capitol attack, and said that he wanted to go “to war” and take “democratic Congress to the gallows,” though he spent only about four minutes inside the Capitol building. Dorstewitz then hyped claims by Timothy Nick, a member of the National Guard in the District of Columbia who he claimed “destroyed the entire ‘insurrection’ narrative” in testimony friendly to Republicans:
“I can say unequivocally that the Inspector General’s Review is riddled with inaccuracies, misstatements, and perhaps false flags and narratives regarding how critical Pentagon senior officials responded when our republic was under great stress,” he testified.
Independent journalist Kyle Becker concluded from his testimony that, “The U.S. government allowed the January 6 riots to happen in order to frame Donald Trump and his supporters as ‘insurrectionists.’ It is simple as that.”
For speaking the truth Nick also probably destroyed his military career.
In fact, Becker is no “independent journalist”; he’s a right-wing activist whose level of credibility ranks rather low and who got suspended from a different publication for spreading conspiracy theories about Barack Obama. None of that bodes well for Nick’s credibility. Still, Dorstewitz tried to finish with a grand flourish:
When Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as America’s 38th president following Richard Nixon’s resignation,he announced “our long national nightmare is over.”
Perhaps other nightmares are now coming to a close — for Trump, the Jan. 6 defendants, and for the American people.
Dorstewitz didn’t explain why people who commit crimes should be allowed to escape consequences for doing so.