As he now reports for Glenn Beck’s Blaze Media, Steve Baker has been a frequent topic of discussion on that “conservative” site over the last few weeks. An independent journalist in 2021 with approximately 40,000 Facebook followers, he went to the Capitol on Jan. 6 to report on the day’s events. As a confirmed libertarian he is highly sensitive to any government’s attempt to abuse its powers. He has as a consequence payed close attention to the many trials of those hundreds accused of “insurrection” over the last three years. Clearly skeptical of the notion that they were attempting to overthrow the government, no doubt bemused by Pelosi’s refusal to take Donald Trump’s advice and bring in more support for the Capitol Police, having exposed the lies of several of those testifying against the accused, his Blaze reports have consistently cast doubt on the exaggerated narrative being promoted by the Biden government. It is hardly surprising, then, that just a few days ago he was dragged into court in shackles.
Released shortly thereafter, Baker expressed disgust that his FBI escort had tried to make him seem a dangerous criminal by placing him in chains. Charged with 4 federal misdemeanors ranging from unlawfully being in a restricted area to actually taking part in an illegal demonstration, Baker is fortunate that both his own film footage as well as a good deal of other video evidence shows him simply documenting what was going on around him while playing no part in it whatsoever. While I have no idea of the fate that awaits him, it is outrageous that dozens of other reporters who were equally guilty of entering the Capitol have been charged with nothing whatsoever, the First Amendment to the Constitution apparently protecting their right as journalists to report what they deem to be the truth. Baker’s prosecution, it would seem, is clearly a result of his political views rather than anything he did on Jan. 6.
In a healthy Democracy, the various arms of the Judiciary defend the Rule of Law based on Objectively defined Statutes rather than in the service of any political party or ideology. I realize this is a standard almost impossible to maintain. But while it is commonplace for “liberals” to cite Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s brazen abuse of his authority as he sought to stifle what he saw as the cancer of Communism in the early 50s, the Biden administration is presently using the various organs of the American legal system with the same degree of autocratic arrogance. That those in the mainstream press who support this brazenly fascistic abuse of power see themselves as the defenders of Democracy is truly insane.
Donald Trump is hardly perfect and no doubt guilty of some of the violations of which he has been accused. But, for example, his indiscretions in handling secret government information would seem to be no more irresponsible than those of Hillary Clinton or Biden himself. Yet while Trump has faced multiple legal assaults in various U.S. jurisdictions in an obvious attempt to keep him from the 2024 ballot, legal investigations of his political opponents have been pursued with far less vigor. It is self-evident that the Biden family profited millions from Joe’s willingness, when Vice President, to sell access to himself to Hunter’s business affiliates in China and the Ukraine. It is equally self-evident that Democratically approved mail-in balloting led to a predictable increase in voter fraud in the 2020 election. Yet while there have been isolated decisions in some jurisdictions validating these charges, the response of both the mainstream media and the Department of Justice is that they are based on just so much right-wing misinformation. It is the simplistic lie repeated daily throughout our “progressive” culture, the lie that has cancelled the possibility of any genuine discourse between the Left and the Right, the lie used by simpletons like Biden to justify his weaponization of the Department of Justice to destroy his political opponents, the lie which in fact led to the arrest of journalist Steve Baker for simply doing his job.