Impartial presidential prospect Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has repeatedly dismissed the severity of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault at the U.S. Capitol over the final calendar year, centered on a collection of interviews reviewed by NBC Information.
“What’s the worst detail that could come about? Right?” Kennedy requested in October on the Aubrey Marcus Podcast. “I signify, we have an total armed service, Pentagon, a couple blocks away.”
“Then, you know, put the types who broke the law in jail and let’s move on,” he additional.
On Jan. 6, 2021, it took the Countrywide Guard a lot more than a few hours to respond to the crisis. In that time, additional than 140 law enforcement officers were being hurt in the course of the attack and 5 officers concerned eventually missing their lives in the months after. Users of Congress and then-Vice President Mike Pence have been also evacuated from the House chamber, and the certification of the 2020 election was properly delayed.
Kennedy’s marketing campaign launched a prolonged statement Friday afternoon in which he said that Jan. 6 “is 1 of the most polarizing subjects on the political landscape. I am listening to individuals of assorted viewpoints on it in get to make perception of the celebration and what adopted. I want to hear each side.”
Kennedy’s assertion reported that though it is really “obvious” that many people broke the legislation on Jan. 6, “I am anxious about the possibility that political goals motivated the vigor of the prosecution of the J6 defendants, their extended sentences, and their severe procedure.” He additional that if elected president he will “appoint a exclusive counsel — an person respected by all sides — to examine no matter if prosecutorial discretion was abused for political finishes in this situation.”
In an interview last month on Fox News, Kennedy mentioned that if elected president, he would “look at particular person cases” when questioned about perhaps pardoning Jan. 6 rioters.
Last spring, Kennedy bemoaned Democrats’ “obsession” with the Jan. 6 assault.
“To me, it is a lot extra significant if we’re commencing to censor cost-free speech. You can rebuild a Capitol,” Kennedy explained on a further podcast, The Jimmy Dore Exhibit.
On Thursday, as very first described by NBC Information, Kennedy’s campaign walked back a fundraising email to supporters that referred to Jan. 6 defendants as “activists” who have been “stripped of their Constitutional liberties,” echoing Trump’s rhetoric about the 2021 riot.
Kennedy spokesperson Stephanie Spear later on claimed the language was an “error.”
“That assertion was an error that does not mirror Mr. Kennedy’s sights. It was inserted by a new marketing and advertising contractor and slipped as a result of the normal approval method,” she mentioned.
Kennedy has also suggested that Biden is a higher danger to democracy than Trump, seemingly dismissing the implications of the Republican’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election reduction. His remarks are based his contention that the Biden administration is unlawfully seeking to pressure social media corporations to clear away certain material on-line.
“What’s a lot more risky? That or the president of the United States, who is instructing social media web-sites to censor his opponents?” Kennedy also reported in his October interview. The previous Democrat-turned impartial prospect appeared to be referring to a scenario right before the Supreme Court docket that could have an affect on the level of call concerning authorities officers and social media corporations pertaining to content removal.
“I can make the argument that President Biden is the a lot worse danger to democracy, and the cause for that is President Biden is the initial prospect in background, the to start with president in record, that has applied the federal agencies to censor political speech … to censor his opponent,” Kennedy stated lately in an job interview on CNN.
Kennedy, a outstanding anti-vaccine activist, has used social media to distribute misinformation linked to vaccines and Covid. In 2022, the Children’s Wellbeing Defense team, an anti-vaccine team led by Kennedy, was kicked off Instagram and Facebook, both owned by Meta, for these types of misinformation.
In yet another instance, Kennedy, in a September interview with PragerU, prompt that he was “at the very least similarly worried” about social media censorship as a bodily assault on democracy like the Jan. 6 attack.
When requested in the trade if he imagined that the attack was an insurrection, Kennedy responded: “You know, I really don’t know. I have found all types of … opposite evidence, and I really don’t — I have not, all over again, drilled down on it.”
