The stumping done by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) for participants in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol combined with her attempt to downplay the severity of the entire event has reached disturbing new heights.
In new commentary online, Greene — who continues to essentially help direct much of the narrative inside the GOP — characterized the placement of reported pipe bombs in Washington, D.C., around the time of Congress’ scheduled certification proceedings in January 2021 as “non threatening.”
Greene was replying to a post from Darren Beattie, a booted member of Trump’s presidential administration. “The pipe bomb was so non threatening that the secret service watched a group of school children walk by it. Remember when they claimed it could have killed Kamala Harris? Great thread here about the “MAGA” pipe bomb from J6,” she alleged. The clear implication is the suggestion that the reported attempt at an explosive device placed outside the HQ in Washington, D.C., of the Democratic National Committee was some kind of false flag operation, meaning staged likely by government agitators or collaborators.
Greene has helped push similar conspiracy theories around the very perpetration of the violent attack on the Capitol, despite the clear record of arrests of Trump supporters who consistently account for the actual violence seen in and around the Capitol building on that fateful day.
The Right has batted around a conspiracy theory of so-called ghost buses full of secret government collaborators actually driving what happened, but there’s just no substantiating evidence for their claims, which even FBI Director Christopher Wray has directly refuted in testimony to Congress. Ray Epps, a man supporting Trump on the ground in D.C. on January 6 who right-wingers accused of exemplifying a secret government plot towards incitement? He eventually was criminally charged — not exactly the mark of a covert fed! The problems with the conspiracy theories extend from there.
