Thanks for your effort post, I'll respond in kind.

> What you're bringing up--particularly the actions of the Senators, Representatives, and lawyers--are legitimate and legal avenues to pursue if one disputes election results.

Of course legislators and lawyers enjoy certain rights. However, those rights are not without limitations. For example, it's fine for a lawyer to file a lawsuit, but it's not fine to do so frivolously or fraudulently. Doing so would incur professional consequences. And indeed, Trump's lawyers who worked with him have faced professional consequences for their roles: Giuliani has lost his right to practice law in NY [1], and Sidney Powell is currently undergoing professional review [2] which might result in the same.

> Democrats have used those avenues in the past, too.

As for legislators, it's fine for them to raise an objection about an election. They enjoy that right. They can do so for a legitimate reason, or than can do so to make a political statement, as you note Democrats have done. What they can't do is use their position to obstruct the proceeding with corrupt intent.

In order for an objection to be raised, a House Rep and Senator must both object. This happened in this case and is fine. But the reasons for their objections had already been litigated. By the 1/6 ceremony, exactly 0 claims of fraud were raised in the appropriate venue (a courtroom), so to raise them exclusively on cable news and the House floor does not evidence a good faith concern about "election integrity".

I'm not the only one who thought the role of various House members on and surrounding 1/6 was suspect; we know several of them sought pardons, and they all have yet to answer why. Why seek a pardon if you don't have consciousness of guilt?

Furthermore, while it may be the right of some state lawmakers to certify federal elections, it's not okay for them to do so in a clandestine and manner in order to transmit a fraudulent certificate of the vote to the Vice President. That happened and it's not okay.

> You're using the quoted part with the first part of your sentence to spread false information.

If we're going to take the out-of-context utterance of the word "peaceful" during a speech to be prima-facie evidence of the intent of the speaker to be peaceful, then we must also take the out-of-context utterance of the word "fight" to be evidence of intent of violence.

The context of the event was that Trump summoned those people to that place based on a lie, one he knew to be false. There was and still is no proof of any of his claims. Not a single one. To stand up there and repeat them in front of a massive crowd is to effect a fraud. He then asked them to do something very specific: march to the Capitol, and "stop the steal", which was a euphemism for obstructing the proceeding. And how did he want them to do it? Trump told them. He said that because of the fraud (for which he had no evidence) that it was fair to play by a very "different" set of rules. Different how? Well Rudy had told them just minutes before: "Trial by combat!" (he screamed to thunderous applause from the armed crowed).

Then Trump directed them to the Capitol, and combat ensued. If you read the court transcripts, defendant after defendant says they thought they were doing what Trump wanted. They thought they were acting on the orders of POTUS.

This is a pretty cut and dry cause and effect. He got people mad over a lie, told them what to do about it, and then watched it happen, as they did exactly what he wanted.

> Everything the President said related to the activities at the Capitol was about keeping it peaceful.

I notice you've left out the crucial tweet he sent during the riots, wherein he expressed displeasure at his VP's failure to follow the plan, which was met by the crowd with renewed calls for violence and death.

Look, I am well aware of the tweets you are posting here. But to determine Trump's state of mind that day it's not enough to look at his Tweets, we have to look at what he did that day. Talk is cheap as they say. In the intervening 3 hours while Trump watched the violence unfold on TV, he did nothing to thwart the violence. When insurrectionists are invading the building and lawmakers are barricading themselves in their offices, a limp-wristed tweet about "peace" isn't enough.

> Armed with what? Firearms? And how could he know that?

An aide to Trump's Chief of Staff heard Trump say the following before his event:

"When we were in the offstage tent, I was part of a conversation, I was in the vicinity of a conversation where I overheard the president say something to the effect of, ‘I don’t effing care if they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me, take the effing mags [magnetometers] away, let my people in, they can march to the Capitol from here. Let the people in, take the effing mags away,’" [3]

She said this in front of Congress, under penalty of perjury. So far no one has refuted her under testimony oath, so we must for now accept it as evidence Trump knew weapons were in the crowd before he told them to go to the Capitol.

> Exactly zero protestors at the Capitol were found to have been carrying firearms.

You need to update yourself on the facts, as this is not true; there were plenty of guns there that day [4][5]. People did bring guns, and police radio chatter played during the 1/6 hearings makes clear that police were aware on that day of armed individuals in the crowd (some setting up positions in trees).

Here's a running list of gun arrests around the 6th that are tied to insurrectionists [6].

The 1/6 committee details what the Secret Service collected that day:

“Secret Service confiscated a haul of weapons from the 28,000 spectators who did pass through the magnetometers: 242 cannisters of pepper spray, 269 knives or blades, 18 brass knuckles, 18 tasers, 6 pieces of body armor, 3 gas masks, 30 batons or blunt instruments, and 17 miscellaneous items like scissors, needles, or screwdrivers,” [7]

That's not even the most problematic bit: now it's known that the Oath Keepers brought an armory's worth of guns to a hotel across the river from DC, with which they had planned to secure the Capitol had they been successful in occupying it [8].

> a violent uprising against an authority or government Surely an actual insurrection would have involved at least one protestor bringing at least one firearm.

Well, they had guns, as I've proven. But even if they hadn't, the definition you quoted fits perfectly because the day was plenty violent. People died and were brutally maimed. You can't show me the videos of that day and ask me to believe it wasn't violent.

> The whole claim that he tried to stay in power is facially absurd. He didn't try to stay in power... he willingly handed over power as evidenced by the fact that there was a peaceful transition of power.

It blows my mind for you to say this, it really does. Because in my reality, 1/6 was the end of the streak of peaceful transitions of power in America. We really are coexisting in two different realities.

To be clear, the actual transition of power for POTUS happens on 1/6 during the counting of the certificates of the vote, not 1/20 at the inauguration. According to the US Constitution, on 1/20 the President's term expires automatically, and the Presidency is transferred to the next in the line of succession. On 1/20/2021, that would have been President Elect Biden. So no matter what Trump did on that day, he was done as POTUS at noon.

The only way to prevent that from happening would be to make sure he was next in line, and the last time to do that before it was set in stone was on 1/6 at the joint session of Congress, by either outright stealing it (by Pence abusing his power) or by at least delaying it (using the mob) to give more time for him to convince states to decertify their elections. Read this law for how that would work [9].

This is why the transition of power was not peaceful. That Trump slinked away to Florida on 1/20 without incident doesn't erase that what he tried to do on 1/6 was use violence to stay in power.

> the January 6th Committee did was on a whole new level. Their entire goal was to get Trump disqualified and tarnish his image, no matter where the facts actually led.

I've heard these charges against the committee, and I just don't see how that comports with the evidence they produced. It's one thing to make charges of bias and a persecution complex emanating from the committee, but you can't say the same for their under-oath witnesses, who were ex-Trump administration officials, top-ranking state GOP officials and lawmakers, law enforcement officers, non-partisan election officials, and regular citizens. They elicited truthful testimony from these individuals which painted a picture that is not good for Trump.

It seems to me that you haven't read the Committee's report, nor watched their public hearings. If you had, you would have been aware of simple facts like the possession of guns by insurrectionists. I really think you should and with an open mind. You might come away with a different perception of their work, because they let the evidence, witness testimony, and depositions do most of the talking.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/07/rudy-giulianis-dc-law-licens...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2022/06/23/sidney-...

[3] https://news.yahoo.com/cassidy-hutchinson-january-6-trump-we...

[4] https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/politifact/202...

[5] https://archive.is/qhs88

[6] https://www.thetrace.org/2021/01/capitol-riot-firearms-arres...

[7] https://nypost.com/2022/12/23/capitol-riot-report-details-we...

[8] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/oath-kee...

[9] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/3/15