The Post:
Using physical characteristics and interviews with family members, supporters and attorneys, The Washington Post identified five of the roughly 15 men who are featured in the video [that preceded the audio recording]. Four of them were charged with assaulting police, using weapons such as a crowbar, sticks and chemical spray, including against Officer Brian D. Sicknick, who died the next day.
Needless to say, had Trump simply acted like a normal boy and conceded the election he’d very clearly lost, Officer Sicknick would almost certainly be alive today. As would Ashli Babbitt, the Trump fangirl-turned-insurrectionist who was shot by Capitol security while trying to force her way through a locked door.
And members of Sicknick’s family have noticed! Brian Sicknick’s brother Kenneth told the Post that he was “disgusted” by Trump’s campaign to rehabilitate the Jan. 6 defendants, adding, “The rallying cry is that no police officer died on Jan. 6, and they leave out inconvenient things like my brother’s first stroke happened on Jan. 6, and he was put on life support and died the following day. And they do that over and over and over again.”
Of course, as with everything Trump-related, all due diligence was completed before he said or did something egregiously weird, like suggesting to an already frightened and confused nation that they should consider injecting disinfectant straight into their arteries. Or, well, maybe not. Yeah, they did exactly zero due diligence.
The audio for the single “Justice for All” was recorded in February by congregating the inmates in different areas of the jail with better acoustics, according to Donna Fiducia, a host on Real America’s Voice, a right-wing news network, who said she helped advise the group on making the recording and getting it to editors at the network. Fiducia said she did not know which inmates participated, and the Trump allies who produced “Justice for All” — Kash Patel, a former White House aide and current Trump adviser, and Ed Henry, another Real America’s Voice host — declined to identify the choir members.
Trump recorded himself saying the Pledge of Allegiance after he heard about the production and wanted to participate, according to the campaign. The Trump campaign said it did not produce “Justice for All” and does not know the names of the singers. When asked about the origin of the song, the campaign referred The Post to the online video as it appeared on the video-sharing website Rumble.
Gee, you’d think if you were going to collaborate artistically with a bunch of criminal defendants, you’d go out of your way to establish their innocence first. This is like asking Kevin Spacey, Bill Cosby, and Subway’s Jared to play the three Magi in your kid’s second-grade Christmas pageant.
The Post has done Trump’s vetting for him, so now—thoroughly chastened—he will no doubt disavow this crew and issue an abject apology for unnecessarily lionizing violent anti-American seditionists. Or not. He is one kooky, unpredictable bird, after all.
RELATED STORY: Trump embraces insurrectionist who wants to execute members of Congress
But in case Trump is reading this—and that’s somewhat more likely now that I’ve just slipped the words “Filet-O-Fish,” “Ivanka,” and “Pornhub” into the body of the text—here’s what The Post found.
Trump’s new “America, yay!” video includes these sketchy characters:
- Ryan Nichols, who faces multiple charges connected to Jan. 6, including assault on a federal officer with a weapon. According to prosecutors, footage shows him using a chemical spray during the melee.
- Shane Jenkins, whose charges include destruction of government property and “assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers using a deadly or dangerous weapon.”
- William Chrestman. According to The Post, he’s accused of “leading a Kansas City-area group of Proud Boys and telling a Capitol Police officer, ‘You shoot, and I’ll take your f—ing ass out!’ as well as using an ax handle to keep police from closing building gates.”
- Jonathan Mellis, who was recorded “repeatedly hitting police officers with a giant stick in the same tunnel battle as Jenkins.”
- Julian Khater, who pleaded guilty to using a chemical spray on Sicknick, who died the day after the Jan. 6 insurrection. Khater is currently serving an 80-month prison sentence.
Somehow it doesn’t ever seem to matter that Trump gets so far down in the mud he needs the world’s longest snorkel. His fans will still support him—the “song” charted at #1 when it dropped in March—and major cable news outlets will apparently still seek to normalize him, despite everything he’s said and done.
But he’s not a legitimate presidential candidate—hell, he’s not even a legitimate American. And it’s high time the media stop pretending otherwise.
RELATED STORY: CNN tried to ignore Trump’s coup attempt
Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.
