Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is pushing for pardons for participants in the Capitol riot, even including individuals who were convicted by a jury of the charge of seditious conspiracy.
“Proud Boys organizer Joseph Biggs sentenced to 17 years by U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly,” Greene wrote online Thursday, mentioning one of the defendants convicted of the sedition charge. “How many violent BLM rioters are serving 17 years?!! Especially after rotting in jail for the past two years. J6’ers need to be pardoned. They’ve been persecuted enough.”
Participants in the Black Lives Matter movement, which it’s flatly false to characterize as generally violent, didn’t storm the Capitol. Greene’s comments on this case gloss over that Biggs was convicted of charges stemming from actions like helping remove physical barriers outside the Capitol, an effort that helped allow for Capitol riot participants to have greater access to the grounds, where they violently assaulted police.
And a co-defendant in this case, Dominic Pezzola, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Friday, shattered a window at the Capitol with a riot shield that he violently wrested from a police officer in tandem with other participants. This is what Greene supports? Her rhetoric is flatly misrepresenting the basic truth of what happened — as established and accepted in a court of law — if she wants to pretend she’s doing anything other than endlessly gesturing towards violent criminals, even if she skirts around outright proclaiming support for violence.
If Trump regains the presidency after an expected — but far from certain — win in the GOP presidential primary taking place next year, presidential pardons could emerge for Capitol riot participants, as it’s a prospect about which Trump already spoke favorably. He has often tried to propagate what are basically attempted excuses for what took place, continuing to push his debunked, nonsense claims of widespread election fraud in the 2020 presidential race.
