This past weekend saw the third anniversary of the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, when mobs of supporters of then-President Donald Trump swarmed the premises, targeting scheduled Congressional proceedings that were meant to certify the outcome from the then-recent race for president.
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), who serves on the House Oversight Committee, shared an accounting on X (formerly Twitter) of a past trip to a D.C. jail where defendants with cases originating with the Capitol violence were being held. He’s discussed some of these details previously, but he emphasized in this thread that Republicans engaged in what he called “disgusting” behavior inside the facility, fawning over jailed January 6 defendants. Public details support this account from Garcia.
At a previous iteration of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) climbed into a faux cell with an actual January 6 defendant dressed in orange putting on a performance of sadness. She knelt, and they prayed. The activist-turned-defendant-turned actor within the bars, Brandon Straka, hadn’t even been sentenced to any jail-time in his own January 6 case.
Greene, who’s also on the Oversight panel, led the GOP side on the past trip to a D.C. jail that Garcia was discussing Saturday. “Marjorie Taylor Greene continues to tell lies about the conditions of the facility and saying that there was no insurrection on January 6. The inmates that we saw were being treated fairly. They had 24 hr medical care, computer tablets & access to communicate with family,” Garcia said. “When we saw the inmates, my Republican colleagues rushed to them and treated them like celebrities rather than people who attacked our capitol police and our very democracy. It was disgusting and gut wrenching. One of the inmates tried to shake my hand and I refused.”
And now, Trump is running for president again on the idea that January 6 detainees are “hostages” and the possibility of pardoning rioters if he wins.
