January 5, 2022 --

This google search --  "Luke Broadwater  New York Times. January 6 Select Committee" -- elicited information that Mr. Broadwater has been megaphoning stories about this Pelosi panel of puppets from the time it was announced by the House speaker, last June.

I was prompted to verify my hunch that propagandist Broadwater was, in effect,  appointed Times hatchet-person-in-chief  on the Pelosi panel after seeing his name on  several "Jan. 6" stories in December.   It would not surprise me to learn,  before the midterm elections,  that he will have become author-in-chief of a report by The New York Times on this ironically named "Select Committee."  (The irony being the fact that Speaker Pelosi, contrary to tradition, selected every single one of the 9 panel members, including the two Never Trump "Republicans," Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.  The title of this pro-Pelosi report might well be a variation of David Plouffe's June 2016 tweet calling for the destruction of Trump "and his kind" -- "The Inside Story How Nancy Pelosi and Her Carefully Selected "Jan. 6" Panel Saved Democracy by  Skewering Trump and His Kind."

There is a caveat to this prediction.  Perhaps by next November, U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols, of the District of Columbia, will have ruled on the complaint, brought by Mark Meadows against Pelosi and her panel, invalidating the subpoena issued to him, and taking note that the panel, itself, was organized without reference to the authorizing resolution that called for 13 members not 9, with 5 Republicans appointed in consultation with House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, not solely by the speaker who, arguably, thereby, undermined Mr. McCarthy's authority.  The authorizing resolution, H. Res 503,  did not call for a vice chair; the Pelosi-appointed "Republican" Liz Cheney was made vice chair, and depositions were to be scheduled in consultation with the ranking member; the Pelosi panel has no ranking member.  And so, Judge Nichols might question the very existence of this select committee in view of the curious way its procedures stray from the authorizing resolution.  

But an adverse ruling  on the actions of the Pelosi panel by a Federal judge should not stop  The New York Times from issuing  its own report on the January 6 Select Committee. Ever since  (at least)  the adoption of the Rutenberg Rules for Radical Reporting, decreed by the Times August 2016, this paper, whose reputation far exceeds its commitment to straight news reporting, has tacked to this Pravda-like credo: full speed on propaganda ahead, the facts be damned. 

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In his December 21 Times example of Select Committee hagiography, Mr. Broadwater,  joined by Michael S. Schmidt, wrote how the committee was planning to put pressure on Attorney General Merrick Garland to bring criminal charges against former president Trump.  The title of this story is "Panel May Push for Criminal Charges Over Riot."  [Italics in original] ( See how the January 6 episode at the Capitol has been reduced from "insurrection" to "riot.")

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The left's current motto can, I believe, be summed up in four words: "It's the Anti-Trump Propaganda, Stupid."   Support for this realization comes in the second and third paragraphs of this December 21 Times story.  First, propagandists Schmidt and Broadwater note that the Pelosi panel "is considering whether the inquiry could yield...evidence of criminal conduct by President Donald J. Trump or others that they could send to the Justice Department urging an investigation."

Let's pause for a moment to consider the ramifications of the foregoing.  The complaint brought by former White House chief of staff  Meadows alleges, in part, that the Pelosi probe is invalid because because it has a criminal, not legislative, purpose. This allegation would be supported by a move from  the panel as described by Schmidt and Broadwater. Consider, also, that Ms. Pelosi is so consumed by Trump Derangement Syndrome that she regards just about any action he has taken as criminal. The thought, in such a mind, could well  lead to  visions of a jury finding that the former president is guilty as charged (by Pelosi) -- and thus, for good and all, would be barred from seeking a second presidential term in 2024.  This would validate the notion expressed by Rep. Jim Jordan that the January 6 Select Committee is actually the Third Impeachment of Trump. (Source of this comment is  E.J. Dionne Jr.'s otherwise anti-Trump column in The Washington Post, July 21, 2021.  

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Now, consider the third paragraph of the Schmidt-Broadwater December 21 article on what the Pelosi panel may have in store for Mr. Trump and others. These propagandists acknowledge that a "criminal referral" by the Select Committee to the Justice Department "lacks legal weight," "[b]ut it could have a substantial political impact by increasing public pressure on Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, who in his first year in office has largely sidestepped questions about what prosecutors are doing to examine the conduct of Mr. Trump and his aides as they promoted baseless allegations of voter fraud."

Good heavens.  The New York Times has, in the words of the late legal scholar Alexander Bickel, "kicked over the traces," to call for "revolutionary justice" -- the "justice" demanded by mob clamor.   The Times, I think, could confidently trash notions like "due process," "equal justice,"  "fair trial," if it were sure that Republicans -- think Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell -- would stand mute in the face of the left's leap into the swamp of totalitarianism.   (I mention McConnell here because Broadwater,  with Katie Brenner, quoted  the Kentuckian, in the Times, December 18,  as praising the Pelosi panel for its subpoenas!). Where, for example, are the demands by congressional Republicans, to the attorney general, to put an end to the inhumane treatment of "Jan. 6" defendants?  Why is the "speedy trial" principle in our Constitution ignored for Trump people?  Only four GOP members of the House,  Reps. Greene, Gaetz, Gosar and Gohmert pressed D.C. officials  to visit  these detainees, and only Greene and Lohmert are witness to their inhumane treatment.  Where is the letter signed  by every House and Senate Republican (save the turncoats) to Biden demanding an end to inhumane treatment -- and SWAT raids -- tor conservative populists?

After little more than four paragraphs on the front page of the Times, December 21 print edition, this anti-Republican propaganda piece takes up much of four columns on page A15 -- columns filled with Prava-like balderdash in an apparent move to get the attorney general to put Donald Trump on trial for complaining that he got a raw deal in the 2020 presidential election.  Recall the spring of 2017 when the Times succeeded in pressing for an investigation whether Donald Trump was elected with the help of Russia ?  That investigation was set off with Mr. Trump as president, and both houses of Congress were in Republican hands. 

In  LPR's view, the conspiracy represented by the left's Russia hoax has been the actual attack on our democratic institutions.

That mendacious  investigation consumed the Trump presidency needlessly. The congressional Republicans should have stood with their president against the  Democrats' predictable calumnies and conclusory allegations, devoid of a factual basis..

It is fair to conclude that the management of The New York Times has assigned Luke Broadwater the task of getting the U.S. media to line up behind it, pressing (does he really need to. be pressed?) Attorney General Garland to put Donald J. Trump on trial for...having dared to win the presidency over the objections of The Swamp/Deep State, that he may be prevented from seeking  the presidency again.  But is not the election of the president a decision for the country as a whole, to determine, not a cabal consisting of "ambitious aggrandizers" (with a nod to Madison, in Federalist No. 57)?

It looks as if Mr. Trump, on target in so many ways, was also on target with his sharp criticism of the media.  It does appear, after all, that the media, led by the Pravda-like New York Times has indeed become the enemy of the people, hostile to the spirit of American liberty, that spirit, as noted by Madison in Federalist No. 57, that nourishes, and is nourished by, the American people.  LPR looks to the midterm elections of 2022 and the presidential election of 2024 to demonstrate that the American people still cherish the liberty bequeathed to them by the Framers.