Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene went to the Washington, DC, jail on Friday to visit detainees accused of involvement in the violent January 6 attack on the Capitol, saying the facility “violates human rights.”
The far-right firebrand says she wants to focus attention on the plight of those charged or convicted in connection with the insurrection aimed at keeping former President Donald Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election.
“DC Jail is mismanaged and violates human rights,” Greene tweeted. “I will see firsthand Joe Biden’s two-tiered justice system.”
Greene claimed that some of the January 6 defendants were forced to spend hours cleaning the jail in the days leading up to the visit, ostensibly to cover up their previous appalling conditions.
Greene has portrayed herself as one of the strongest supporters of the so-called “J6” defendants, whom she calls political prisoners.
While Republicans typically spend little time defending prisoners’ rights, Greene has made an exception for the Jan. 6 extremists, regularly suggesting they are being treated too harshly.
“No prisoner in the United States should be treated this way,” Greene wrote in a March 9 letter requesting permission to visit.
An estimated 20 defendants linked to Jan. 6 are being held in Washington jails, all but three of whom have been charged with assaulting police officers.
Two of them have already been convicted of assaulting the police and another six have pleaded guilty to those charges.
They are among more than 1,000 people, including white nationalists and other extremists, who have been charged in connection with Jan. 6, the worst attack on the Capitol in more than 200 years.
Trump demanded that right-wing extremists “fight like crazy” to keep him in power by preventing Congress from certifying Biden’s victory. in the 2020 presidential election.
Greene has long made it a top priority to defend those who have been arrested in connection with the riots on Capitol Hill and to expose what she sees as inhumane treatment inside jail.
After a 2021 visit to the same facility, Greene released a report detailing what he called “abuse and neglect.”
Defending the January 6 indictees is a key element in the far-right’s effort to cover up the story of the insurrection.
Republican lawmakers have bizarrely claimed that the angry mob was actually nothing more than a group of “tourists” visiting the Capitol.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) met Thursday with the mother of Ashli Babbitt, the Trump supporter killed by a police officer as she tried to enter a chamber of Congress where the legislators took refuge from the mafia.
In an unusual twist, two progressive Democrats planned to accompany Greene and his Republican-led delegation on the latest visit.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Tex.) and Rep. Robert Costa (D-Calif.) say they want to highlight the serious crimes the Jan. 6 defendants are charged with.
