Saying the Jan. 6 assault on the Capital was a peaceful protest gone wrong (“Revisiting Jan. 6 — a protest gone wrong”, published Jan. 26) is like saying a tsunami is a little wave that got out of hand.

There is more and more evidence being uncovered that this was a well planned attack with possible Trump government officials and cohorts involved. David must have been watching carefully edited videos that only shows people, more or less peacefully, strolling through the Capitol building, while ignoring all of the beatings, pepper spraying and tasing of a multitude of officers.

The reasons for all of these protesters even being at the Capitol were all based on lies that Trump had been repeating over and over again, even though they had no basis in reality.

David had stated in an earlier column that, in all of the court cases that had been dismissed pertaining to these allegations that the courts never bothered to look at the evidence and just dismissed them out of hand. What he didn’t say was that the reason they didn’t look at the evidence is simple —there was no credible evidence to look at!

While I would agree that most of the people that wrongfully entered the Capitol building that day were more or less peaceful, they did so with one intent only: to interfere with a government body and thwart the will of the people in an election of the president of the United States.

To say otherwise is to ignore the simple facts of the situation. These people believed the lies that Trump had been spreading for two months and were there to overturn the results. Whether they were peaceful or otherwise doesn’t matter — this was an insurrection, plain and simple, and frankly, I feel that every single person identified as entering the Capitol building that day should be charged with insurrection.

Speaking to David’s other claim of some possible offenders being held without bail, those few people were only the most violent offenders or were instrumental in the planning and execution of the events. I can’t speak to the conditions he claims as I could find no evidence of that being true or not. I like that he says that they are still being held a year later as if they were arrested the day after and have been held ever since, while most of these offenders were identified and arrested much, much later.

Larry Benson

Enumclaw