WND Helps A Proud Boy Rioter Play Victim

We’ve documented how WorldNetDaily complained about the convictions of Proud Boys members over the Capitol riot — some on seditious conspiracy charges — while downplaying their acts of violence. That continued in a May 15 article by Bob Unruh:

A Jan. 6 prisoner is demanding House Speaker Kevin McCarthy release all of the Capitol surveillance video that he promised to make public.

It was about four months ago that McCarthy vowed to release all of the footage as the Republican Party took control of the House when it was elected into the majority.

The Gateway Pundit commented, “Here we are now, 5 months into House Republicans’ reign of Congress, and nothing is happening.”

The report explained prisoner Dominic Pezzola called the Pundit to express his anger.

“He still hasn’t let it out. They are just all talk. They don’t care about us,” Pezzola said. “If we don’t get up and get off our a***s and grow a set, it’s going to be too late for our way of life. If it doesn’t affect you right now, someday, your children are going to school in between learning about proper pronouns and transgender studies, they are going to be learning about the ancient conservatives that are now extinct that used to roam the plains of the flyover country that had to be eradicated by the left because they were a threat to socialism and communism.”

He charged, “How dare [McCarthy] call himself a Republican. You say you work for us? Everyone knows that January 6 was a complete set-up. There are feds, there are informants and there’s Antifa — I mean, there is everything you can imagine in there.”

It wasn’t until the 20th paragraph that Unruh quoted the far-right Gateway Pundit to describe what Pezzola was accused of: “Pezzola, who joined the Proud Boys 30 days prior to January 6, was acquitted of a seditious conspiracy charge but convicted of other charges, including robbery of government property and assaulting, resisting, or impeding an officer.” And Unruh didn’t mention what, exactly Pezzola did: he stole a riot shield from a Capitol Police officer and used it to smash out the glass in a Capitol window after another rioter threw a piece of wood through it. Pezzola later bragged in a selfie video he was smoking a “victory smoke” cigar as he said “I knew we could take this (expletive) if we just tried hard enough.”

Unruh went on to uncritically repeat the Gateway Pundit claiming that “constitutional experts confirm the GOP-led House has the power to assure J6 defendants of due process, or even set them free,” citing “Article I Section 8 Clause 17 of the U.S. Constitution.” In fact, that clause simply establishes that the federal government can control federal buildings and has nothing whatsoever to do with criminal proceedings.

This was followed two days later by an anonymously written article attacking police for using typical crowd control procedures to beat back a mob:

The crowd already was rowdy on that fateful Jan. 6, 2021, when hundreds were at the U.S. Capitol to protest what they viewed as a purloined American presidential election.

But the police lines largely were holding protesters in a group, on the sidewalk, with some minor skirmishes.

But then the shooting started. By the police, since they were the only ones armed.

And that’s when, according to a lawyer representing Jan. 6 defendants, it all went bad.

It is the Gateway Pundit that has posted a long series of videos showing the change from protesters angry and upset to unarmed protesters being shot and injured by police.

[…]

The report said the confirmation of “unjustified use of deadly force” reveals “the precise time the typical protest escalated into ‘the most investigated demonstration in FBI history.'”

That’s according to defense attorney Steven Metcalf, who told the Gateway Pundit, “This is crucial — this is crucial — because this is where what everybody is saying” about J6 being a set-up and a fedsurrection “actually matters. But nobody is pinpointing the precise time.”

President Trump ordered law enforcement to use tear gas and rubber bullets against largely peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square, outside the White House, during protests following the death of George Floyd, and we don’t recall WND being bothered by that.

The anonymous WND writer also repeated old grievances:

Ex-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi set up a partisan committee – including only harsh critics of President Trump – to “investigate” the Jan. 6 events, but its members focused almost solely on issues they thought they could attribute to Trump’s actions – and his instructions to supporters to demonstrate “peacefully” that day.

In fact, the committee deliberately withheld massive amounts of surveillance footage from the public, video that still hasn’t fully been made available to Americans.

The writer censored the fact that Trump also said during his pre-riot speech: “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” which would seem to overrun his CYA call for peace.