House Republicans accused of distorting facts of Jan. 6 riot
Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are being criticized for minimizing the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and spreading misinformation about the incident. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene led a tour of the District of Columbia jail to check on conditions for the Jan. 6 defendants, with Republican lawmakers handshaking and high-fiving the prisoners, who chanted “Let’s Go Brandon!” when the group left the facility. The chant is a coded vulgarity against President Joe Biden.
Meanwhile, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy recently met with the mother of slain rioter Ashli Babbitt and gave Fox News’ Tucker Carlson exclusive access to a trove of Jan. 6 surveillance tapes. Taken together, Republicans in the House can be seen as working steadily to downplay the risk of domestic extremism in the U.S. and portray the rioters as victims of federal prosecutors, despite many of them being convicted of serious crimes.
Some House Republicans are even branding those who stormed the Capitol as “political prisoners,” a move that alarms those who recognize a dangerously Orwellian attempt to whitewash recent history. “There’s no question Marjorie Taylor Greene and other Republicans are attempting to rewrite history,” said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “They’re making light of what was a serious attack on our democracy.”
Nearly 1,000 people have been charged by the Justice Department for the attack on the Capitol, and leaders of the extremist group Oath Keepers have been convicted of seditious conspiracy. The 20 or so defendants being held at the jail, many of whom face serious federal charges, battled police at the Capitol, officials said, in what was a gruesome, bloody scene of violence and mayhem.
The country has been here before— in the aftermath of the Civil War, the Lost Cause movement sought to reframe the battle over ending slavery in the U.S. as one of states’ rights, and again in the years following the Civil Rights movement as critics of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. questioned his transformative legacy.
The new Republican leadership in the House is openly questioning what happened on Jan. 6 and how the federal government is investigating and prosecuting extremists, while outside groups are raising money and rallying to the aid of Jan. 6 defendants. A Republican-led Judiciary subcommittee recently probed the federal government’s treatment of parents protesting school board policies, sometimes violently, as unfair. The new Republican committee on the “weaponization” of the federal government will delve into First Amendment free speech rights on social media next week.
House Minority Leader McCarthy warned that the federal government is labeling parents as “domestic terrorists” for showing up at school board meetings, even though such prosecutions are extremely rare. He was referring to a 2021 Justice Department memo from Attorney General Merrick Garland responding to the National School Board Association’s concerns about violent protesters at school board meetings. “Parents should have a right to go to school board meetings and not be called terrorists,” McCarthy said.
Greene has said the Capitol attack was wrong, but at the jail visit on Friday, she said she believes there’s a “two-tiered” justice system and that the Jan. 6 defendants are being “treated as political prisoners” for their beliefs. Democrats on the tour said that is categorically false. While the local jail has long been the subject of complaints, the Jan. 6 defendants have been housed in a newer wing that was not cited as problematic in the Marshals’ statement.
Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of California noted the way the Republicans led by Greene treated the Jan. 6 defendants as celebrities, shaking their hands and slapping backs when the lawmakers arrived at the jail facility. As they left, the defendants chanted the “Let’s Go Brandon!” phrase against Biden. “What is most important to remember is that while Marjorie Taylor Greene and others want to treat these folks as pseudo celebrities, some of these folks are insurrectionists,” Garcia said. “And we can’t forget that.”
Original Story at apnews.com – 2023-03-25 07:00:00