Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Greene visits Jan. 6 ‘political prisoners’
GOP House member tours D.C. jail setup
WASHINGTON — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene swept into 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!” — a coded vulgarity against President Joe Biden — as the group left.
A day earlier, Speaker Kevin Mccarthy met with the mother of slain rioter Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran who was shot and killed by police as she tried to climb through a broken window during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
In actions and legislation, Republicans are seeking to portray perpetrators of the Capitol riot as victims of zealous federal prosecutors, despite many being convicted of serious crimes. As former President Donald Trump calls for the Jan. 6 defendants to be pardoned, some House Republicans are attempting to rebrand those who stormed the Capitol as “political prisoners.”
“There’s no question Marjorie Taylor Greene and other Republicans are attempting to rewrite history,” said 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 tour Greene led at the jail Friday comes as nearly 1,000 people have been charged by the Justice Department in the attack on the Capitol — with leaders of the extremist Oath Keepers convicted of seditious conspiracy. The 20 or so defendants being held at the jail, many in pretrial detention on serious federal charges, are among those who battled police at the Capitol, officials said, in what at times was a gruesome bloody scene of violence and mayhem.
Greene told The Associated Press the idea she’s trying to rewrite history is the “stupidest thing” she’s ever heard of, especially since the assault on the Capitol has been captured in the 41,000 hours of video that Mccarthy made available to Fox News.
“We can’t rewrite it — it’s all on video,” Greene said.
“You can’t change the history, but what we can do is expose the truth. That’s what we need to do,” Greene said.
While Greene has said the Capitol attack was wrong, at the jail visit 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 a U.S. 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.