Remember January 6? You Should Thomas E. Caldwell’s new book,”The Mouths of the Wicked,” brings it all back where it belongs Diana West

There was something nearly miraculous about the sweeping grant of clemency President Trump enacted on his first day back in office on January 20, 2025, to over 1, 500 Americans known as “the J6ers.” Rounded up largely for exercising their freedom of speech, ruined, and imprisoned following an assembly-line-series of American show trials staged throughout the illegitimate Biden regime, these men and women were now, almost all of them, fully pardoned; 14 of them, including Thomas E. Caldwell, author the new book, The Mouths of the Wicked, had their sentences commuted. Tom-I call him Tom since I got to know him, as I’ll explain-received a full pardon two months later. Quite suddenly, by proclamation, the J6ers were free-free from prison, free from pending trials, free from legal jeopardy. Some, such as Jeremy Brown, had to grind away another month or more in the hole. Others, tragically, didn’t make it through the ordeal. According to StopHate. com, as many as 31 deaths and suicides may now be connected to events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Many have yet to “resume” their lives or even find employment. But think of that historic moment: Like POWs released at war’s end or Soviet political prisoners, “zeks,” freed from the Gulag on the ascension of a more benevolent power (or a new gang trying to spite the old gang), the J6ers fanned back out across the country. If the similes sound jarring, that is testament to how far outside of the American tradition a reign of terror and mass show trials really are. But I know of no better terms to describe this era-the Biden-Garland-Monaco-Wray-Graves-District Court Era of unjust federal police and prosecutorial thuggery. For historical precedent, there are the fearful histories of political persecution in autocracies and Marxist totalitarian systems, infamous for the English Star Chamber, for example, and, of course, the Soviet Purge Trial. This is not to suggest that the J6 operation popped right out of a functioning American Republic. More recently-and so close to home it is home-we may trace an unmistakable continuity with the mission and tactics of the rolling coup d’etat known as the Russia Hoax, waged by the same Marxist Deep State, or counter-state, through Donald Trump against the American people.[1] It is important to realize that such counter-state operations are always attacks on We, the People. While it’s true that the “fed-surrection” of January 6-that multi-tentacled, coordinated, military and intelligence mechanism of incitement and entrapment-ensnared and brought to ruin “only” the tiniest percentage of our population, the terror it fomented, the propaganda that perpetuated it, and the excessively, even ludicrously harsh, sentencing which manifested its cruelty, were always aimed at demoralizing and controlling the rest of us. This, then, was not the America we thought we grew up in and would pass on to our children. It is, however, the America in which a Marxian counter-state has arisen, “boring from within” for well over a century. On January 6, 2021, the time seems to have been right-or dictated by desperation-for that counter-state to act, first and foremost, to quash the constitutional process unfolding inside Congress where challenges to the 2020 election results were beginning to be mounted by elected officials. Additionally, as I have written before, who remembers, or knew at the time, that more than one hundred legislators from contested battleground states had written to Vice President Mike Pence asking him to delay the January 6 certification for ten days? Had competent, good-faith news media existed-not just so many state-propaganda units-this historic, political earthquake from across the country would have made banner headlines. But, in compliance or alignment with counter-state operations, the media ignored it. Since the average reader will never have read or heard of these lawful, constitutionally required efforts, here is an excerpt from a letter to Pence signed by 88 state Republican legislators: We write to ask you to comply with our reasonable request to afford our nation more time to properly review the 2020 election by postponing the January 6th opening and counting of the electoral votes for at least ten days, affording our respective bodies to meet, investigate, and as a body vote on certification or decertification of the election. This action can be completed prior to the inauguration date, as required by the Constitution. “That letter,” John Solomon reported on January 5, 2021, “attached an appendix listing irregularities and illegalities in the battleground states where Trump has contested the election results showing Biden the winner. The appendix, the lawmakers wrote, `provides evidence of a coordinated and structured multi-state effort to undermine state law protecting election integrity. Additional time must be afforded for the legislatures to meet and for state legislators to fulfill their constitutional duties.’ ” Additional time for officials to fulfill their constitutional duties, whether in Congress or state legislatures, was the last thing the counter-state wanted or could afford. The steal-plus-coverup had to take place in the dark-or, even better, in the plain light of chaos filtered through an audaciously Big Lie: namely, that the Trump patriots assembled in Washington, DC, to hear and show support for the president and many other dignitaries and speakers scheduled to speak on January 6 were a violent, armed mob of “insurrectionists,” pre-organized to “overturn an election.” Is that what evidence showed? Did you see evidence? Let me rephrase that last question: Did you see evidence that had not been edited by counter-state actors and acolytes? What about videotape showing what appear to be government agents literally attacking the Capitol and prodding the MAGA crowd inside the great doors? Such sensational evidence exists. It was videotaped by the late independent journalist Bobby Powell, who got a copy of his video to members of Congress and every media figure (also current FBI leadership, including Kash Patel) you might think to name. Powell’s footage could well be the smoking gun, even the ripcord, on the government conspiracy of January 6. No one, but no one, has yet picked it up or given it a good strong pull. As Maj. Stephen S. Coughlin (US Army ret.) reminds us, the counter-state in also bi-partisan. It is such evidence and more that must be brought forward to public and congressional attention and, where merited, trial if the American people are ever to expose all of the January 6 lies, punish the perpetrators, and save the Republic. In The Mouths of the Wicked, readers will begin to grasp the gravity of these unrighted wrongs. That is because Tom Caldwell had to expose quite a few government lies himself during his shocking show trial in federal court in order to stay out of prison. Charged with being the “leader” of the “widest ranging conspiracy case” connected to January 6 by federal prosecutors Jeffrey Nestler and Kathryn Rakoczy, Tom Caldwell was originally dubbed the “lead defendant” in the Oath Keepers’ trial. He was alleged to be the “Commander” of that handful of militia members who “breached” the Capitol to stop the certification process to seize power to . to. and . and then what? Never mind that the government’s conspiracy theory made no sense. And never mind that Tom was not the leader of an insurrection or anything else; planned nothing beyond a quick trip with his wife Sharon to hear the president speak; was not the Commander of the Oath Keepers; wasn’t even an Oath Keeper. The only kind of commander Tom Caldwell has ever been was a decorated lieutenant commander in the United States Navy, in which he served honorably for twenty years. Still, I have only scratched the surface of all the many things that Tom Caldwell was not and didn’t do, as he and his lawyer David Fischer proved in court. Let me tick off a scad more: Contrary to the federal case, Tom never brought firearms into Washington, DC; never entered the Capitol; never battled with police; never climbed over or moved barricades; never conspired with anyone to break any laws; never broke any laws. Nonetheless, Tom and Sharon Caldwell were compelled to spend four long, arduous years, with Tom in and out of court and prison, in order to prove it. In those same four years, similar cases-similar frame-ups-played out literally hundreds of times in our land of the free and home of the brave. The fed-surrection offered endless pretexts to stand up what was brutishly touted as the largest, most extensive, most important FBI investigation in all of American history. And so it was. Only instead of protecting the American people and the Constitution, it was there to protect a coup d’etat. It trashed the Constitution and Bill of Rights, crushed MAGA, and, in so doing, consolidated and expanded counter-state power. I don’t know of another way to explain these events that makes more sense. On reflection, then, maybe it’s more than “nearly” miraculous that President Trump was empowered to grant presidential clemency to the J6ers. These pardons were something Americans who elected Donald Trump (for the third time) wanted very, very much. But they are not the end of his obligation to the J6ers, or our own. As much as anything else, the events of January 6 showed how easy it was for ruthless counter-state actors to set aside-make null and void-our Constitution and Bill of Rights, “checks and balances,” “due process,” law and order, even reality itself, in their dark quest for total control. Only an indomitable chief executive such as Donald Trump could ever have swooped in with blanket clemency to save the J6ers from further suffering-and thank goodness. But in the end, a chief executive whose term of office will expire is no protection for the future. So long as this counter-state abuse by punitive federal police and prosecutorial powers stands unexposed, unchallenged, unprosecuted, unpunished, with the most culpable criminals doing little more than changing government hats or moving into lucrative partnerships at “white shoe” law firms, We, the People, will appear again in their crosshairs. We are probably there already. This stark. looming threat is what makes The Mouths of the Wicked of vital importance. It is not only an eyewitness account of one man pitted against the counter-state-sustained by his wife’s love, his lawyer’s counsel, and, above all, his faith in God-it serves as a sobering warning about our Nation’s future. Most Americans simply don’t know what really happened to the J6ers. They need to read for themselves and, through Tom’s vivid, enraging, engaging, and also uplifting recollections, feel what it was like to be an innocent man beset by the federal behemoth, starting one cold winter night when the US government staged an armed raid on the Caldwell family farm in western Virginia. This act of state terror would be repeated all over the country against other J6ers. Americans need to learn, because our media never informed them, what so many of our fellow Americans, upstanding citizens, many with careers of service to our country, no criminal records, families, grandchildren, businesses, had to endure-in prisons before they even got their day (weeks, months, years) in court and, too often, in sentencing that rivaled and even surpassed those of hardened criminals. I didn’t get to know Tom Caldwell until after The Great Pardoning. We had already “met,” in a way, though, soon after he was released from prison to home confinement. It seemed that not even Judge Amit Mehta, seeing cracks in the government case against Tom, could justify holding him in jail until his trial. As I examined these same cracks-that is, deep flaws in the government’s case-I wondered why he was still being charged at all. I put my welling outrage into an article headlined “FREE THOMAS CALDWELL. NOW.” What a thrill it was to learn later that Sharon Caldwell had seen my piece and saved it for Tom to read. The article was heartening to both of them, and, as Tom writes in the pages ahead, he was even moved to tears. I know it wasn’t the power of my prose that was so moving. It was the power of the simple facts, set forth and found to be a gross injustice-like so many other gross injustices suffered by so many J6ers. Only a handful of writers were reporting on them. The counter-state not only pulled off its fake “insurrection” on January 6; it managed to eradicate facts and fairness on the matter from the national conversation. Tom writes: I dared for a moment to hope that there were other real investigative journalists who would call out this terrorizing of an average American citizen and his dear wife. I imagined a flood of articles to raise a cry in the public square for my complete freedom. Sadly, there was none. As a Nation, we were that bludgeoned, that robotic. However, I must admit, we still are. The failure to tell the truth about what this government did en masse to so many Americans-it works out to one J6 arrest per day throughout the Biden years-is another reason the publication of The Mouths of the Wicked is such a significant event. Most Americans simply don’t know, haven’t heard the facts about January 6, or, to follow along with Tom on his return to his home from jail, what it was like to wander through the wreckage of one’s life: Each room I entered bore witness to the desecration two months prior. Personal family photos were gone; every image of weddings, birthdays, vacations, treasured memories of places in time, of loved ones lost long ago had been spirited away on computers and flash drives by the FBI. They scooped up notebooks, personal medical records, and many of my creative writings, including funny short stories, post-it notes, jokes, quotations, and background notes for some of the screenplays I have written. Shame on them all for what they do to innocent people like us. J6 Americans learned the roughest, most painful way possible how quickly a citizen could pass from the constitutional rock-certainty of “I have my rights” to the counter-state prison door clanging, “No, you don’t.” What happened to those rights? Who stole them? How do we restore their sanctity? These are the unanswered questions, the unavenged betrayals, the unchecked dangers of January 6 that pardons alone do not address. To date, the Trump administration, the Pam Bondi Justice Department, the Kash Patel FBI, Congress, the courts, the legal profession, and the media have ignored these urgent matters. As if to pretend none of it ever happened-which, I’m afraid, only ensures its recurrence-they have tabled the issue, turned the page, moved on. The reader probably senses the end of the essay looms. In fact, it is exactly here where I search in vain for that last line. Typically, this is the moment for that capstone thought or shift in focus back to the reader, perhaps with an exhortation to hold our elected officials accountable. I won’t insult anyone’s intelligence with such a line; everyone knows elected officials regard or learn to regard their responsibilities and their oaths as a kind of joke. Extending presidential pardons en masse in January 2025 was probably the absolute limit for the Powers That Be, who, in the end, I suspect, were swayed by their understanding that pardoning all, and all at once, paid off a key political debt and relieved an abiding source of raw political pressure. In other words, this was not their first act in the restoration of the Republic. Which, last lines aside, leaves us in a perilous limbo.
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