WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene swept into the District of Columbia jail to test on prerequisites for the Jan. 6 defendants, with Republican lawmakers handshaking and high-fiving the prisoners, who chanted “Let’s Go Brandon!” — a coded vulgarity in opposition to President Joe Biden — as the crowd left.
An afternoon previous Speaker Kevin McCarthy met with the mummy of slain rioter Ashli Babbitt, a Navy veteran who used to be shot and killed by way of police as she attempted to climb thru a damaged window all through the Jan. 6, 2021 assault at the Capitol.
And the House Republican chief just lately gave Fox News’ Tucker Carlson unique get entry to to a trove of Jan. 6 surveillance tapes regardless of the conservative commentator’s airing of conspiracy theories concerning the Capitol assault.
Taken in combination, the House Republicans will also be observed as running incessantly however carefully to distort the details of the fatal rebel, which performed out for the sector to see when Donald Trump’s supporters laid siege to the Capitol, and within the procedure downplay the chance of home extremism within the U.S.
In movements and law, the Republicans are in quest of to painting perpetrators of the Capitol rebel as sufferers of zealous federal prosecutors, regardless of many being convicted of significant crimes. As Trump requires the Jan. 6 defendants to be pardoned, some House Republicans are making an attempt to rebrand those that stormed the Capitol as “political prisoners.”
The result’s alarming to those that acknowledge a dangerously Orwellian try to whitewash fresh historical past.
“There’s no question Marjorie Taylor Greene and other Republicans are attempting to rewrite history,” mentioned Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “They’re making light of what was a serious attack on our democracy.”
The excursion Greene led on the native jail Friday comes as just about 1,000 other folks were charged by way of the Justice Department within the assault at the Capitol — leaders of the extremist Oath Keepers convicted of seditious conspiracy. The 20 or so defendants being held on the jail, many in pretrial detention on severe federal fees, are amongst those that battled police on the Capitol, officers mentioned, in what now and then used to be a grotesque bloody scene of violence and mayhem.
Greene advised The Associated Press the theory she’s making an attempt to rewrite historical past is the “stupidest thing” she’s ever heard of, particularly because the attack at the Capitol has been captured within the 41,000 hours of video that McCarthy made to be had to Fox News.
“We can’t rewrite it — it’s all on video,” Greene advised the AP.
“You can’t change the history, but what we can do is expose the truth. That’s what we need to do,” Greene mentioned.
The nation has been right here sooner than — within the aftermath of the Civil War, when the Lost Cause motion sought to reframe the struggle over finishing slavery within the U.S. as one in all states’ rights, and once more within the years following the Civil Rights motion as critics of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. puzzled his transformative legacy.
In the House beneath Republican keep watch over this 12 months, the brand new management brazenly questions what took place on Jan. 6 in addition to how the government is investigating and prosecuting extremists. Outside teams are elevating cash and rallying to the help of Jan. 6 defendants.
This previous week, a Republican-led Judiciary subcommittee probed the government’s remedy of oldsters protesting faculty board insurance policies — every now and then violently — as unfair. Next week, the brand new Republican committee at the “weaponization” of the federal government will delve into First Amendment free speech rights on social media.
McCarthy warned that the federal government is labeling parents as “domestic terrorists” for appearing up in school board conferences, although such prosecutions are extraordinarily uncommon.
His was a reference 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. Garland had directed federal law enforcement to address what he called a “disturbing spike” in harassment of school officials.
Probing the matter, the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee released a report showing that in one federal investigation, the FBI interviewed a mom for allegedly telling a local school board “we are coming for you.” In another, the FBI investigated a dad who opposed COVID mask mandates after a tipster to a federal hotline said he “are compatible the profile of an insurrectionist” as a result of he “rails against the government” and “has a lot of guns and threatens to use them.”
“Parents should have a right to go to school board meetings and not be called terrorists,” McCarthy mentioned.
While Greene has mentioned the Capitol assault used to be mistaken, on the jail visit Friday she mentioned 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 came has long been the subject of complaints — the U.S. Marshals made plans to relocate 400 detainees after a surprise 2021 inspection found parts of the facility “do not meet the minimum standards” — the Jan. 6 defendants have been housed in a newer wing that was not cited as problematic in the Marshals’ statement.
The two Democrats who joined the tour as members of the House Oversight Committee said they both had visited detention facilities before. “It’s probably as good as a jail can be,” said Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, a former public defender.
As they left, the defendants chanted the “Let’s Go Brandon!” phrase against Biden, he said in a tweet.
“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 advised journalists. “And we can’t forget that.”
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