The Justice Department has now admitted—after months of prosecutorial claims to the contrary—that Vice President Kamala Harris was not in the Capitol building during the Jan. 6 “breach.”
The government has been using then-Vice President-elect Harris’s purported presence, according to Politico, to charge protestors under 18 U.S. Code § 1752, which, among other things, prohibits unlawful entry to “a building or grounds where the President or other person protected by the Secret Service is or will be temporarily visiting.”
Politico said that “in a series of charging documents and other court filings, the DOJ has cited Harris’s supposed presence as a given and an indication of the disruption caused by the defendants’ actions.”
Yet “a source familiar with Harris’ movements on Jan. 6 confirmed” to reporters “that she exited the Capitol after a Senate Intelligence Committee briefing that morning,” and that “she had always been planning to leave the building at that time.”
DOJ prosecutors have confirmed her absence in court filings.
What is going on?
Politico suggests that prosecutors were relying on Harris’ presence as a “backstop to Pence in prosecutors’ charging documents.”
Martin Walsh at Conservative Brief, on the other hand, contends that the Department of Justice simply had “no idea where Harris was when the protest broke out.”
Perhaps a better question is: Why did Harris leave?
Is her departure related to the information she was given during the “Intelligence” briefing that morning? Did she have prior knowledge of a possible Capitol “breach”?
It has already been reported that a Capitol breach and even “bomb scares” were on the minds of Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and the head of the Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency as early as December.
What was on Kamala Harris’ mind?
