The poor soul responsible for selecting the most laughable falsehood to have emanated from Trump World is going to have his work cut out for him. The sheer volume of hooey to the effect that former President Donald Trump won the election that he lost, that the election he lost was stolen from him and that he and his troops were not responsible for the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol makes it difficult to pick a winner in the No-Lie-Is-Too-Brazen Competition.

Surely, however, Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., is in the running. "Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked through Statuary Hall," Rep. Clyde offered recently, "showed people in an orderly fashion staying between the stanchions and ropes taking videos. If you didn't know that TV footage was a video from January the 6th, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit."

Congress is no place for idiots, but you wouldn't know it watching most Republicans dodge, duck and dissemble about not only one of the blackest but most humiliating days in American history. The footage that Americans have watched for six months ought to have made clear to all but the mendacious and the witless that, far from resembling a "tourist visit," Jan. 6 resembled a neo-fascist riot aimed at stopping the certification of the presidential election — the election, that is, that occurred on Planet Earth.

Last week's release of a report on the Jan. 6 attack compiled by a New York Times video team makes the stomach turn anew. Based largely on footage from the rioters themselves and supplemented by body camera video from police officers, the report illustrates how horrifying the attack was, and how fragile the democracy we have just spent the weekend celebrating really is.

It begins with a busload of Trump troops traveling to Washington reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, though one wonders to what. "It's so much more than rallying for President Trump," says one. "It's really rallying for our way of life." They were urged to come to Washington on the day mandated by the Constitution for counting presidential electors in order to stop the count from taking place, with the promise of a "wild" time by their leader. "This election was a fraud," lied Trump, who exhorted them to march on the Capitol. Trump consigliere Steve Bannon, saved from a fraud conviction by a presidential pardon, had told them what was expected of them. "All hell is going to break loose tomorrow," he boasted. "Everyone is going to remember who actually stands in the breach and fights tomorrow and who goes running off like a chicken," crowed Trump advisor Jason Miller.

"As soon as Trump is done (speaking), we're storming the Capitol," announced one of the mob leaders on the 6th. "Pass it on." And pass it on they did. The Times video records cries of "Take the Capitol!" and "We will take the building!" as the rioters overwhelmed the Capitol Police and breached Congress in eight separate locations. "You gonna stop us?"

Over several hours, the mob that Trump built Tased, gassed, beat, trampled, dragged and crushed the police that they profess to care about, injuring some 150 officers. The Justice Department has charged 500 of them with crimes, including 100 with assaulting law enforcement officers. FBI Director Christopher Wray estimates that "hundreds" more criminal investigations are underway.

Against this backdrop, the party of patriotism and law enforcement once again opposed letting Americans know what happened on January 6 and why. After blocking a bipartisan commission to investigate the riot, congressional Republicans almost unanimously opposed an investigation by a congressional committee — wait for it — because it would be "partisan."

And there you have the GOP's position. No bipartisan investigation. No congressional investigation. No investigation. Jan. 6 was just a normal tourist visit to the Capitol. That's their story, and they're sticking to it.

Jeff Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment, he is a longtime columnist for the Boston Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Mideast.

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