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Book Review: Jack Cashill’s illuminating look at the women of January 6

By John Dale Dunn

Like Trump, the surviving women faced juries that were poisoned from the beginning. None was allowed a change of venue from a district that gave Trump only 5 percent of its vote. Like Trump, they were subjected to aggressive prosecutions on charges that were manufactured to punish them for their ideas.

Jack Cashill’s Ashli: The Untold Story of the Women of January 6 could not be more timely. On the cover is a photo of Ms. Ashli Babbitt, a petite 14-year Air Force veteran with multiple deployments to war zones under her belt. Unarmed when she entered the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Babbitt was shot and killed without warning by Michael Byrd of the US Capitol Police.

As is his custom, Mr. Cashill focuses on the story of the people involved. In Ashli, he provides a compelling narrative of ten female J6ers, Ashli among them. In telling their personal stories, he documents the external forces that inspired them to go to Washington on January 6. With the possible exception of the late Rosanne Boyland, also killed on January 6, the women to a person strenuously resisted the COVID tyranny being imposed on America’s citizens.

To a person, they understood that the election was anything but the “free and fair” process the Democrats claimed it to be. To a person, too, I am sure they are appalled by the guilty verdict in President Trump’s New York case, a further vindication of their need to make their voices heard.

Although all but one of these women lacked an advanced degree, they knew and respected the Constitution incomparably better than did their liberal female counterparts. In marching to the Capitol, they felt themselves to be well within their rights to petition the Congress to allow for a proper vetting of the results.

Mr. Cashill is well-schooled in the development of the deep state. He argues that January 6 is one of the rare occasions in which a Hitler metaphor is warranted, namely the Reichstag Fire scenario. Like Hitler, President Joe Biden exploited an event to launch an obscene crackdown on the political opposition.

In fact, there is more doubt about Hitler’s role in starting the Reichstag fire than there is about the role of Biden operatives in fomenting the riot at the Capitol. As a result, some 1,400 patriotic citizens have been snared in a web of prosecutorial tyranny that can justifiably be compared to the Stalinist show trials of the 1930s. Of the ten women Cashill profiles, none did anything worse than break a window, and yet two of the ten were killed, six have been imprisoned, and two others—one a great-grandmother—await sentencing.

Like Trump, the surviving women faced juries that were poisoned from the beginning. None was allowed a change of venue from a district that gave Trump only 5 percent of its vote. Like Trump, they were subjected to aggressive prosecutions on charges that were manufactured to punish them for their ideas.

The stories of these women show a systematic violation of civil rights as well as a concerted media effort to destroy their lives. The magnitude of the problem on display must be considered as only a sampling of the government’s mistreatment of thousands of others. The details are so gut-wrenching that I had to put the book down sometimes just to catch my breath.

The women of J6 profiled in the book were beaten, harassed, abused, persecuted, and prosecuted by government agents, vilified by the media, and treated as pariahs by their friends and family. I began this book wondering why these women went to Washington on January 6 and ended up wondering why I stayed home.

In addition to being in the top tier of investigative reporters, Cashill is a great stylist. He makes you care about these women as much as you care about this country. In the wake of the Trump verdict, we will all have to make sure America knows just how much we do care.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/06/book_review_jack_cashill_s_illuminating_look_at_the_women_of_january_6.html