Gerth: These Kentucky Republicans will believe anything. Don't fall for it

The Republican Party of Kentucky has officially gone off the deep end.

It happened Saturday when the GOP's Central Committee voted 34-32 to back a resolution that claimed among other things, people who were arrested at the U.S. Capitol for their actions on Jan. 6 were simply exercising their constitutional rights of free assembly and free expression.

They would have you believe that those people weren't given due process and that the government is withholding information about what REALLY happened on Jan. 6.

It wouldn't be a stretch for some of these people to believe that some of the defendants charged with Jan. 6 crimes are now being held without bail, along with Elvis Presley, Bigfoot and John F. Kennedy Jr., on Jeffrey Epstein’s island, where they're forced to use non-binary pronouns.

I shouldn't give them ideas.

That will probably show up in a resolution at some point.

But, to be honest, it ain't any crazier than what was in that resolution approved by the GOP on Saturday. And it ain't any crazier than the identical resolution − Senate Resolution 50 − that state Sen. Lindsey Tichenor filed in the state Senate last week.

According to the Lantern, an online news publication, Hardin County GOP Chairwoman Bobbie Coleman, who introduced the resolution at the GOP meeting, claimed in an interview that more than 200 FBI agents infiltrated the crowd that stormed the Capitol as if to say, the whole thing was a "false flag" operation conducted by the government.

It's the same claim that U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican, made recently on a podcast hosted by Tucker Carlson, who was so far out there that even Fox News thought he was a liability.

In the cuckoo for Coco Puffs world where Tichenor, Coleman, Higgins and Carlson live, none of the people who broke doors and windows at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, scaled walls, stole documents and computers, beat police with flag polls and defecated in the hallways did anything wrong.

It was all the Capitol Police, the Department of Justice and Antifa.

Doesn't matter to these people that hundreds of Donald Trump supporters have already pleaded guilty to their crimes.

Here are the facts.

Since the insurrection, the federal government has arrested about 1,240 people involved in the attack on the Capitol, according to a New York Times article published last week. Of them, about 710 of those charged have pleaded guilty to misdemeanors or felonies.

The Times reported that about 170 have been convicted at trial, and both the Times and the Washington Post have reported that only two people have been fully acquitted.

Exact numbers are hard to come by, but Attorney General Merrick Garland said Friday more than 890 people have been convicted in total.

As far as the claim that those charged aren't being given due process, some defendants have been held without bond.

That’s not odd, according to The Dispatch, a conservative media company that last fall debunked claims presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has made about people charged with minor crimes being held in the Washington, D.C., jail.

The Dispatch reported that U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, a conservative, had written a letter saying that 85% being held without bond were accused of assaulting police officers and all were charged with felonies of some sort.

One person who was detained, for instance, was Eric Christie, who was charged after he was shown in videos allegedly carrying a hammer through the Capitol. A judge ordered him held without bond after he engaged police in a standoff and surrendered only after holding them at bay for three hours.

Remember, some of these people were calling for the deaths of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Vice President Mike Pence.

While people like Tichenor and Coleman are trying to normalize what the rioters – and, yes, they were rioters – did on that day, a precious few Republicans have stood up publicly to say this is wrong.

Some of them are too scared to stand up to Trump.

Others don't want to risk their party losing the 2024 presidential race, even if their candidate is a serial liar encouraged the insurrectionists to take the Capitol and didn't blanch when he was told that some of them wanted to kill his vice president.

It’s all part of an effort by some in the GOP to rewrite the history of Jan. 6 to get Donald Trump elected as president.

Trump, himself, has claimed in recent weeks that the protest at the Capitol was “peaceful” and that those who are being held are “hostages.”

But Trump knows better than that. He’s just lying.

I’m not sure what’s worse when it comes to Tichenor and Coleman – and other Republicans who support these ridiculous resolutions: whether they are so bent that they believe these ridiculous claims or that they’re not smart enough to know the truth.

Thankfully, there are a few Republicans out there who will tell the truth.

State Sen. Whitney Westerfield, who has been critical of Trump, blasted his own party on his website on Tuesday.

"What I saw on January 6, 2021, was not a lawful exercise of constitutional rights, but a criminal assault on our democracy and the institutions that guarantee it," he wrote.

"I will not honor it, will not water it down, hedge or equivocate about it or stand by idly as others try to whitewash the events that transpired on that day," he said.

Westerfield is not running again for reelection. He would probably lose if he did because he has the guts to stand up to the crazies in his party like Tichenor and Coleman.

Listen to him and don't buy the snake oil the grifters, liars and apologists in his party are selling.

But, if you do, you'd probably believe some of the Jan. 6 defendants are now being held on Jeffrey Epstein's island along with Elvis Presley, Bigfoot and John F. Kennedy Jr.

You're smarter than this, aren't you. Please tell me you are.

Joseph Gerth can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at jgerth@courierjournal.com.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Kentucky resolutions regarding January 6 riots are full of lies