MRC Predictably Bashes Jan. 6 Committee (Again) As Its Mission Ends

The Media Research Center has constantly attacked the House committee looking into the Capitol riot and its causes — not that it ever offered any factual counterpoint to the testimony revealed by the committee — so it’s not a shock that as the committee concluded its business and prepared to issue its final report, the MRC simply couldn’t stop the hate. Nicholas Fondacaro whined in a Dec. 19 post:

With the January 6 Committee having held their final hearing on Monday by sending criminal referrals against former President Trump and others to the Department of Justice (DOJ), the liberal broadcast networks swooned for their friends on the committee. ABC and NBC suggested the committee was better at conducting investigations than the DOJ. Meanwhile, CBS was itching to see soon-to-be former Republican Congresswoman and committee vice chair, Liz Cheney (WY) run for president against Trump.

Immediately following the proceedings, ABC chief anchor David Muir opined, “We have just witnessed an extraordinary moment in American history, the January 6 Select Committee with both Democrats and Republicans … Voting unanimously to send a criminal referral to the Department of Justice.”

ABC chief Washington correspondent Jon Karl joined him to blow smoke for the committee. According to him, the biased committee conducted the most thorough investigation in American history. “This committee conducted a thorough investigation … one of the most thorough we have seen of any single incident in American history,” he proclaimed.

Again, no factual counterpoint was offered — Fondacaro was simply being paid to whine. Kevin Tober similarly complained with the additional whine that something historic was described as “historic”:

On Monday, the hyper partisan January 6 congressional committee recommended criminal charges against former President Donald Trump. Due to this news, the “big three” evening newscasts brought out the confetti and each led with the story while hyping its “historic” nature, with one network going as far as to laughably claim that the committee was “bipartisan.” 

During ABC’s World News Tonight, anchor David Muir hyped how the “January 6 committee making history today for the first time Congress has recommended criminal charges for a former President.”  

Muir bragged that the committee voted “unanimously to recommend former President Trump be charged by the Justice Department for his actions leading up to and including January 6,” and reminded viewers how many seasons the Pelosi circus ran: “The committee’s nearly 18-month investigation, ten public hearings, depositions from more than 1,000 witnesses.”

Meanwhile on CBS Evening News, anchor Norah O’Donnell began the program by proclaiming it a “historic day on capitol hill,” because “for the first time in American history, Congress has referred a former President to the Department of Justice for possible criminal prosecution, recommending four felony charges for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election.”

O’Donnell told viewers that “the statute for one of those charges, insurrection, says someone convicted shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.” 

Which of course, is the entire point of the committee.

Tober didn’t explain why that was a bad thing.

Aiden Moorehouse cheered that “Former Acting FBI Director and current CNN analyst Andrew McCabe took a much more cautious tone than most media pundits, and accidentally hinted at how the blatantly partisan and theatrical presentation the Committee opted for ended up hurting it in the end,” adding that “McCabe lent credence to one of the strongest accusations against the conduct of the January 6 Committee: that it was purposefully designed as a theatrical production intended to push a narrative more focused on short-term electoral gains in 2022 than any real long-term accountability.” Never mind, of course, that Moorehouse’s employer would have criticized the committee whatever it did because its beloved Donald Trump was being investigated.

Moorehouse’s boss, Tim Graham — who had previously complained that non-right-wing media was covering the final pre-election hearing from the committee instead of the latest legal fiasco by right-wing prosecutor John Durham, which the MRC also ignored — was in full whine mode for his Dec. 19 podcast: “Monday’s rerun hearing of the House January 6 committee drew the usual supportive wave of live coverage — and then led the evening newscasts of ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS. Coming next are the massive 500-page copies of the committee’s final report — The New York Times, The New Yorker, and MSNBC’s Ari Melber are all pushing versions of the report. The committee’s own official report — with commentary by Rep. Adam Schiff — is coming out on the second anniversary of the January 6 riot.” Graham followed up in his Dec. 21 column, with an added dose of Hunter Biden Derangement:

After the final hearing of the Pelosi-picked House January 6 panel, Time magazine sent out an email to its audience, under the headline “Trump should be prosecuted, Jan. 6 Committee declares in historic criminal referral”. To our leftist media elite, everything the Democrats do to promote themselves is “historic.”

Is it surprising to anyone that the House Democrats (and Cheney and Kinzinger) want Trump in an orange jumpsuit? Is it “historic” if the referrals are ignored by the Justice Department?

Obviously, the riot itself is historic, in the worst way. But Time and their media pals would never consider the heavy-handed Hunter Biden scandal censorship “historic,” as in an ever-more-obvious plot to prevent Donald Trump’s re-election. They cannot mentally connect Hunter censorship to January 6, even though that kind of rigging outraged Republican voters of all kinds. You get the sense that journalists get emotional and hyperbolic and imagine that anyone talking about Hunter’s laptop is an honorary rioter. 

But Graham is serving up an implicit defense of Trump by not criticizing his actions leading up to the riot or during it, in which he spent three hours watching it on TV instead of trying to stop it. No, it’s all about the evil Hunter Biden, and Trump is as pure as the driven snow.

The MRC also published a Dec. 29 syndicated column by Cal Thomas complaining that the committee had a “predictable outcome” and insisting that “One can oppose Donald Trump’s run for president in 2024, while still questioning the way the House committee conducted itself.” But he too failed to dispute any of the evidence the committee uncovered.