The Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol may be one of the darkest days for American democracy. Mainstream media has portrayed the attack as being instigated by pro-Trump supporters. While there were some Trump supporters who went overboard in the predominantly peaceful protest, what most media failed to report is that the break-in was at least partly instigated by hardcore leftist radicals.
Jack Sullivan, an ardent supporter of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, is known to have encouraged protestors to break into the Capitol building. The entire event was recorded in a video he captured and uploaded on YouTube Jan. 7.
In the video, Sullivan can be heard encouraging people to burn the Capitol building before entering it. When people questioned this on Twitter, he merely stated that it was “part of blending in.” This fits into the Antifa strategy of combining with specific opposing groups through infiltrating their protests, and initiating charges at government forces, with the end result being that the group gets condemned, while the instigators walk away scot-free.
Next, he can be heard trying to convince police officers at the Capitol to let the people inside; he succeeds and gets inside, along with hundreds of others. An officer asks him to leave the Capitol but Sullivan declines. He says to the officer that “you’re not stopping anything from happening.”
Sullivan reaches the glass-pane door to the Speaker’s Lobby and tells the officers at the door to go back home “because I’ve seen people out there get hurt” and says that they will make “a path of death.” The officers move away. He encourages rioters to break in and three people succeed in crushing the window panes.
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An officer on the other side of the door points a gun at them. A woman can be seen climbing on to the window frame. The officer fires a shot that hits her and she falls back. The victim was identified as Ashli Babbitt, an ex-Air Force officer who later succumbed to her injuries.
Sullivan has actively taken part in BLM protests and riots. In July last year, he was arrested for participating in a protest during which a motorist was shot. In a tweet posted in December, he encourages people to commit violence against the state. “An armed revolution is the only way to bring about change effectively. I can tell you that the dynamics completely shifted when shots can be fired back,” he says in the tweet.
Sullivan is the founder of a YouTube channel called ‘Insurgence USA’ that aims to “empower black and indigenous voices” and encourages society to “intervene in violence enacted by the state and government vigilantes.”
Babbitt’s death is now under investigation. Her Twitter account shows that she was a Trump supporter. In one of her recent posts prior to the Capitol attack, she said that nothing can prevent the protestors from descending upon Washington DC. Meanwhile, the Senate has announced a bipartisan probe into the Capitol building attack to determine how the police and other officers allowed people to break into the restricted site. Several dozen protestors have been arrested. A total of 53 people are facing charges, with 13 of them charged in a federal court.
“It is our duty as bipartisan leaders of the Senate committees with jurisdiction over homeland security, oversight and Capitol operations to examine the security failures that led to Wednesday’s attack… Let us be clear: An attack on the Capitol Building is an attack on every American. We plan to conduct oversight and hold bipartisan hearings on these horrific events, and work together to make the necessary reforms to ensure this never happens again,” the senators said in a statement.
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