L.A. Times Columnist to Biden: Open 1/6 Commission to Investigate ‘MAGA Terrorists’

FILE - In this Sept. 11, 2001 file photo, as seen from the New Jersey Turnpike near Kearny
AP Photo/Gene Boyars, File

A columnist at the Los Angeles Times is calling on President Joe Biden to seat a 1/6 Commission, much like the 9/11 Commission established after the terrorist attack on U.S. soil in September 2001, but this time to investigate what she calls “MAGA Terrorists.”

Virginia Heffernan is referring to an attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6 by hundreds of people, many of them wearing Donald Trump MAGA hats and carrying Trump flags.

“After the attack of Jan. 6, someone ought to register a new domain: dontmoveon.org,” she wrote. “The insurgency by MAGA terrorists simply cannot stand as another fresh insult to the brain that Americans are forced to live with.”

The 1/6 Commission would be independent of the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigations and would have a goal other than criminal prosecution:

The commission’s work product wouldn’t be arrests but a comprehensive report detailing how and why Trumpite terrorists stormed the U.S. Capitol to stop the certification of an election.

Such a commission would not end cinematically with people in handcuffs or stints in supermax. It would do nothing but inform us. But often bringing facts to light is the highest service to humankind. It’s certainly crucial if we’re to prevent such an attack from happening again — and calm the nationwide distress that is also threatening to undo us.

We need the impeachment and criminal investigations and prosecutions to provide justice, and a 1/6 Commission to supply truth.

Heffernan cast a wide net in placing blame for the Capitol incursion, including pointing a finger at Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), an unshakable Trump ally, citing a scandal involving a former boss accused of sexual misconduct with young athletes. She brands former Coach Jordan as trying to cover up for Richard Strauss, although those charges were never proved.

“But other reporting indicates the coaches knew about the abuse,” Heffernan concludes without including that reporting.

Heffernan also finds Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh guilty, falsely accused of sexual assault, because she believes the charges against him “were never fully investigated.”

She makes this claim despite in-depth investigations Kavanaugh faced before being seated as a federal judge and over the course of his confirmation hearing for the Supreme Court.

She reaches the same conclusion about Trump’s failed first impeachment because it did not “include obtaining and hearing relevant testimony and evidence.”

And now, Heffernan writes, it is time to investigate Trump and his supporters for questioning the outcome of the presidential election. Heffernan wrote:

Vast sums of money, time and public attention — and eventually terrorist aggression — have gone toward superspreading this propaganda, which the historian Timothy Snyder has identified as Trump’s master lie, to which all his other lies are now subordinate. A 1/6 Commission would focus on that — analyzing the master lie’s invention, amplification, dissemination, and its use in radicalizing and organizing foot soldiers for insurgency.

Heffernan also praises big tech companies banishing Trump from social media platforms and wants to “gauge the culpability of QAnon, the Proud Boys, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley until we understand how dog whistles and green lighting work.”

And even if the commission doesn’t answer all the questions about the January 6 attack, it could explain something “about this latest Trumpian horror.”

“If we’re to resume American democracy worthy of the name, we cannot go into the future with the Capitol siege marked as a cold case,” Heffernan writes.

Follow Penny Starr on Twitter or send news tips to pstarr@breitbart.com

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