US Politics
Marjorie Taylor Greene pays tribute to ‘patriotic’ Jan 6 rioters and claims they were held in ‘DC gulag’
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Marjorie Taylor Greene, the now-former Georgia Republican congresswoman, has posted a tribute to the people who took part in the attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, as its five-year anniversary approaches.
Greene stepped down Monday after falling out with President Donald Trump over a variety of issues last year and has said she has no plans to remain in politics, but, in applauding the “patriotism” of the rioters, she appeared to be suggesting she may not be done with their shared “America First” cause just yet.
Whether the MAGA movement would ever welcome her back after her perceived disloyalty to the 47th president remains to be seen.
Writing on X Tuesday, Greene said: “I’ll never forget going into the DC Gulag in Nov 2021 and seeing the J6’ers who were being held over 22 hours a day in solitary confinement even though they had not been convicted and were pretrial.
“They were broken men, words can’t describe it.”
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She went on to reminisce about one of the prisoners she met, who brandished a hand-drawn Stars-and-Stripes flag, and about a group inviting her to join them in singing the national anthem. “Their melodic voices which combined their deep sadness and their unwavering patriotic conviction is a sound I’ll never forget,” she said.
Greene concluded by observing, “Your government can break you. It can shatter your life. There should never be a two tiered justice system in America where one set of political protesters are freed from their charges and the other set of political protesters are crushed as an example to never rise up against your government.
“Instead it is your right to hold your government accountable to you, the American people.”
Five people were killed and many more injured on January 6, including over 100 police officers, when Trump supporters, angry at then-Vice President Mike Pence’s certification of former President Joe Biden’s election victory, attacked the Capitol.
Lawmakers and aides gathered inside the complex had to flee for their lives as violent clashes erupted between demonstrators and law enforcement on the steps outside, with some of the rioters eventually breaching the legislative complex, roaming the halls and vandalising offices, including that of then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi, before order could be restored.
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Ultimately, over 1,500 people were prosecuted for their part in the melee, only for Trump to issue a blanket pardon as soon as he returned to the White House in January last year.
At least 33 of the convicted insurrectionists have been rearrested, charged, or sentenced for other crimes since January 6, according to an analysis by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington published last month.
Of that total, six were charged with committing child sex crimes, five with possession of illegal weapons, five with driving while impaired or under the influence, and two with rape.
Greene has remained constant in her support of the rioters, despite Trump’s failure to prove that Biden’s win at the polls was the result of fraud, and has a history of invoking the day to make inflammatory statements.
She downplayed its significance as “just a riot” in October 2021, claiming that the Declaration of Independence called on Americans to “overthrow tyrants” anyway, and again in April 2022 when she hit out at the “over-dramatisation of a riot that happened here at the Capitol one time.”
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At a Young Republican Club dinner in New York in December 2022, she caused concern by claiming that, if she and Steve Bannon had organized the siege at the Capitol, “We would have won… Not to mention, it would’ve been armed.”
In her memoir, MTG, published in November 2023, Greene falsely claimed that no Democratic members of Congress had helped safeguard the House of Representatives as protesters attempted to break in.
“Several of the Republican congressmen said, ‘We’re going to stay right here and defend the House chamber,’” she wrote. “As they began barricading the door with furniture, I noticed not one Democrat was willing to stay to defend the chamber.”
Her version of events was contradicted by many others in the chamber at the time, who pointed out that Democratic representatives Jason Crow, a former Army Ranger, and Seth Moulton and Ruben Gallego, both former Marines, were instrumental in helping their colleagues get out of harm’s way.
Greene went on to threaten Matthew Graves, the former U.S Attorney for the District of Columbia, who prosecuted the participants, and to defend Trump’s mass pardoning.
“All of y’all’s obsession with January 6 is absurd,” she told a journalist last January. “Everybody outside of here is sick and f*****g tired of it… Everybody up here has their panties in a wad.”
