Kevin Greeson was one of four who died at the Capitol protest on Jan. 6, 2021. But the events have been so distorted that you probably don’t know that.
Though I never met him, news of his death hit me hard. Whether it was our physical similarities or my own, personal experiences at massive marches on the Washington Mall, I identify with Greeson.
And, as a husband and father of young children, I try to imagine his family’s pain. Imagine your own father going to the U.S. Capitol for a rally only to come home in an urn.
Greeson was not trespassing, He wasn’t dressed in tactical gear. He wasn’t carrying a gun, taser, or pepper spray. He wasn’t pushing on barriers or shouting obscenities.
One minute he was talking to his wife on a cellphone. The next minute he was dead. That’s the undisputed public record.
After that, it gets weird.
Within hours, someone tweeted that Greeson had died by stupidly tasering his own testicles—multiple times—while trying to steal a painting from the U.S. Capitol.
Of course, none of that is even remotely true. But before it was refuted, it had forever painted a normal family man and bipartisan voter (he had voted for Obama and Trump) as a knuckle-dragging rube.
Who would start such a deliberately defamatory rumor? And why?
The FBI regularly uses powerful, intrusive means to police social media users. They could answer this question in a heartbeat. But they haven’t.
Meanwhile, actual eyewitnesses say that Greeson was hit in the eye by a projectile when the Capitol Police launched an unprovoked barrage of rubber bullets and concussion grenades into the crowd at 1:18 P.M.
Despite these wildly different claims, Washington, D.C.’s chief medical examiner withheld his official report for three full months. Only after Greeson’s cremation, did the examiner rule his cause of death as “hypertensive atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.” Of course, a second opinion is impossible.
Who ordered the cremation? Why? Was his eye damaged, or not? More questions. No answers.
Greeson wasn’t the only one to die of questionable causes. Within minutes, Benjamin Phillips died under nearly identical circumstances. What are the chances that two men, ages 55 and 51, would have simultaneous heart attacks within mere yards of one another? More questions.
So, when Wyoming’s then-at-large representative, Liz Cheney, was appointed as vice chair of the Select January 6th Committee despite being a lifelong Republican, I had cautious hope that America might get some answers.
But when the committee’s Final Report was released two Christmases ago, It never even mentioned Greeson’s name —nor Phillips’, nor that of Roseanne Boyland, who was beaten by police and died three hours later. But it did mention Trump— 4,207 times in 845 pages.
So imbalanced was the report that, according to the Washington Post, 15 staffers of the Select J-6 committee quit over complaints that Cheney quashed “important findings unrelated to Trump.”
Speaker Kevin McCarthy asked a bipartisan subcommittee of the Committee on House Administration to investigate the investigators. That committee released its “Interim Report on the failures and politicization of the January 6th Select Committee” two weeks ago.
The Report mentioned Cheney by name 128 times in as many pages. The accompanying summary sheet highlighted 10 findings.
The first four found that Cheney:
(1) “colluded with ‘star witness’ Cassidy Hutchinson without Hutchinson’s attorney’s knowledge;”
(2) that Cheney “should be investigated for potential criminal witness tampering based on the new information about her communication;”
(3) that “Cassidy Hutchinson’s most outrageous claims lacked any evidence, and the Select Committee had knowledge that her claims were false when they publicly promoted her… [and Cheney] baselessly attempted to disbar Hutchinson’s former attorney;”
(4) that Cheney “used the January 6 Select Committee as a tool to attack President Trump at the cost of investigative integrity and Capitol security.”
After laying out the evidence, the report concludes that “numerous federal laws were likely broken by Liz Cheney, the former Vice Chair of the January 6 Select Committee, and these violations should be investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
Cheney quickly posted a response on Blue Sky. It attacked — wait for it, Donald Trump — and the investigatory committee. She alleged non-specified “lies and defamatory allegations.” But, notably, not one of Cheney’s 179 words disputed or denied the committee’s findings.
As a Wyomingite, I find this very troubling. While millions of Americans want a full accounting, our former representative is obsessed with Trump.
How is it that Kevin Greeson, a man like me, could go to Washington for a political rally and come home in an urn? It’s a simple question that has enormous implications for the First Amendment.
This is not about Trump or Cheney or any other political vendetta. While Cheney mentioned Trump five times per page and was, herself mentioned once per page, I am still waiting to see Keven Greeson mentioned even once.
The people of Wyoming are responsible for sending Liz Cheney to Washington. They deserve to know what she did as their representative.
More importantly, they need to know what happened to Kevin Greeson, and to what extent their representative derailed the investigation into his mysterious death.
Jonathan Lange is a Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod pastor in Evanston and Kemmerer and serves the Wyoming Pastors Network. Follow his blog at https://jonathanlange.substack.com/. Email: JLange64@protonmail.com.
