Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy\u2019s campaign told supporters Wednesday that those facing charges in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot are \u201cactivists sitting in a Washington DC jail cell stripped of their Constitutional liberties.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kennedy\u2019s campaign used the language in an email urging his followers to sign a petition calling for the release of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. In the email, titled \u201cWe Must Free Assange!,\u201d the campaign compared those jailed for their actions on Jan. 6 to Assange and Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who leaked information about top-secret U.S. surveillance programs and is now living in Moscow.<\/p>\n
The campaign claimed Thursday that Kennedy did not approve of the wording in the email, blaming the \u201cerror\u201d on a contractor who the campaign later said has since been terminated. But Kennedy himself has previously downplayed the Jan. 6 attack and said he is open to pardoning convicted rioters.<\/p>\n
The email, sent from \u201cTeam Kennedy,\u201d refers to a British court\u2019s decision to delay Assange\u2019s extradition to the United States until he is guaranteed free-speech protections and U.S. officials offer assurances that he will not incur the death penalty in a U.S. trial. Kennedy \u2014 an anti-vaccine activist who rails against government censorship as a major plank of his third-party campaign \u2014 has said he would pardon Assange if elected president.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Brits want to make sure our government doesn\u2019t kill Assange,\u201d the email says. \u201cThis is the reality that every American Citizen faces \u2014 from Ed Snowden, to Julian Assange to the J6 activists sitting in a Washington DC jail cell stripped of their Constitutional liberties.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear which Jan. 6 defendants Kennedy\u2019s campaign is referring to \u2014 very few of them are in the D.C. jail, where a small percentage await trial, sentencing or transfer to a federal prison to serve out their sentences. Despite complaints from some far-right lawmakers, no court has found that the detention violated their rights.<\/p>\n
The naming of the defendants as \u201cactivists\u201d echoes Donald Trump\u2019s decision to align himself with the Jan. 6 rioters. He has called them \u201cpatriots\u201d and \u201chostages\u201d and glossed over the violence committed that day in a bid to prevent Joe Biden from being confirmed as president.<\/p>\n
At campaign rallies, Trump has played a musical tribute to the jailed Capitol defendants. Meanwhile, President Biden has slammed Trump\u2019s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election or take responsibility for the violence. Kennedy has mostly avoided talking about Jan. 6 on the campaign trail, in speeches or social media postings. He did not post on Twitter, now called X, about the riot.<\/p>\n
But Kennedy shared his views about the Capitol attack with Politico\u2019s David Freedlander, who asked him in October whether he remembered where he was on Jan. 6, 2021. Kennedy\u2019s comments came after the two had discussed the candidate\u2019s views on government censorship.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do you think is more dangerous,\u201d he asked Freedlander. \u201cThe censorship by the government of Americans who disagree with its policies or Jan. 6?\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cJan. 6 was an attack on a building. And we have lots of layers of government behind that building.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kennedy previously told The Post that he accepted the results of the 2020 election but would not commit to accepting the results of the 2024 election. He said he would consider pardoning those convicted of their role in the riot.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf prosecutorial malfeasance is demonstrated, then yes,\u201d he said. \u201cOtherwise, no.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Thursday, the campaign said in a statement that the email was \u201can error that does not reflect Mr. Kennedy\u2019s views.\u201d<\/p>\n
The statement \u201cwas inserted by a new marketing contractor and slipped through the normal approval process,\u201d campaign spokeswoman Stefanie Spear said. <\/p>\n
Kennedy faced criticism when he argued this week that Biden was a greater threat to democracy than Trump, who still falsely claims that Biden was not legitimately elected in 2020. Kennedy\u2019s assertion was based on the Biden administration\u2019s push for social media companies to monitor their sites for medical misinformation; Kennedy was temporarily banned from Instagram for spreading misinformation about vaccines.<\/p>\n
\u201cHim trying to overthrow the election clearly is a threat to democracy,\u201d Kennedy told CNN of Trump. \u201cBut the question was, who is a worse threat to democracy and what I would say is \u2026 I\u2019m not going to answer that question, but I can argue that President Biden is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kennedy started his run for the presidency as a Democrat but decided in October to mount a campaign as an independent and has increasingly ramped up his attacks on Biden. The descendant of the prominent political family holds some appeal for both Republicans and Democrats in what looks to be a Biden-Trump rematch as he seeks ballot access across the country.<\/p>\n
More than three years after the Capitol attack, only 30 of the nearly 1,400 people charged with committing crimes that day are in the D.C. jail. All but a few of them have been charged or convicted of assaulting police officers during the riot. Most are awaiting sentencing or transfer to a prison facility. Among the handful being held before trial are a man with a long criminal history charged with firing a gun outside the Capitol building, a man who showed up armed outside former president Barack Obama\u2019s house, and people accused of attacking officers with such weapons as explosive devices and a metal whip.<\/p>\n
In late 2021, a federal judge asked the Justice Department to investigate complaints from Jan. 6 defendants that they were being mistreated in the D.C. jail. A surprise inspection found that the facility was unsanitary and that staff members were engaged in abusive behavior \u2014 but not in the section where the alleged rioters were being held, where conditions were found to be \u201clargely appropriate and consistent with federal prisoner detention standards.\u201d<\/p>\n
The same judge, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, has joined several colleagues in pushing back publicly on claims that riot participants are being punished for their beliefs or for demonstrating in support of Trump. The Capitol attack, Lamberth said in sentencing one rioter this week, \u201cwas neither First Amendment-protected activity nor civil disobedience \u2026 because it was violent, not peaceful; opportunistic, not principled; coercive, not persuasive; and selfish, not patriotic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fifty-five percent of Americans believe the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6 was \u201can attack on democracy that should never be forgotten,\u201d according to a Post-University of Maryland poll from January. However, Republicans increasingly view the rioters in a positive light, with only 18 percent saying they were \u201cmostly violent,\u201d compared with 77 percent of Democrats and 54 percent of independents.<\/p>\n
A previous version of this article incorrectly spelled David Freedlander\u2019s last name. The article has been corrected.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy\u2019s campaign told supporters Wednesday that those facing charges in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot are \u201cactivists sitting in a Washington DC jail cell stripped of their Constitutional liberties.\u201d Kennedy\u2019s campaign used the language in an email urging his followers to sign a petition calling for the release of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2757,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}