https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/11/unprecedented-capitol-protest-sets-new-precedents/
Unprecedented: It is the word most often applied to the events at the Capitol on January 6.
In his remarks that afternoon, as the chaos was still ongoing, Joe Biden warned that “our democracy is under unprecedented attack.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Attorney General Merrick Garland, and leaders of both political parties also describe the four-hour mostly nonviolent disturbance at the Capitol complex as something without precedent.
“On January 6, 2021, the world witnessed a violent and unprecedented attack on the U.S. Capitol, the Vice President, Members of Congress, and the democratic process,” wrote Republican and Democratic senators in a joint committee report released earlier this year.
“We mourn the deaths of the two Capitol policemen and others connected to these unprecedented events,” the nation’s top military leaders, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, said in a January 13 statement. (We now know that those two officers did not die as a result of the protest.)
The national news media also flaunts the word with ease and frequency, historical context and common sense be damned. One federal prosecutor who handled the Oklahoma City bombing case, which resulted in the murder of 168 innocent people including 15 children under the age of five, told the New York Times in April that “the Capitol attack was, thankfully, an unprecedented event.”
Joe Biden’s Justice Department argues for unusually harsh sentences on the basis that “the crimes . . . committed on January 6 are unprecedented.” Therefore, the government routinely claims in sentencing motions, judges should ignore precedent for similar offenses. “These crimes defy statutorily appropriate comparisons to conduct in other cases that occurred before January 6, 2021,” one prosecutor wrote in August.
Long delays in the discovery process are blamed on the “unprecedented” volume of evidence, which includes tens of thousands of hours of video footage and hundreds of thousands of FBI documents. Ditto for delayed trial dates; foot-dragging on discovery renders many defense lawyers unable to prepare for trial. Judges repeatedly cite the “unprecedented” nature of the Capitol protest and massive trove of evidence as an excuse to stall trial dates until the middle of 2022.
New Norms
Portraying January 6 as “unprecedented” is not an accident; it justifies extra-constitutional, judicial, and legislative action under the guise that nothing like this has ever happened before and that language will rationalize future measures to make sure it never happens again. Nothing is off the table as the Biden regime, Beltway judges, and the media seek to avenge an “unprecedented” protest in a government building where the only people killed were Trump supporters, including at least one by a federal police officer.