WASHINGTON — When Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, organized a tour of a DC jail to inspect conditions for those accused in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Democrats faced a choice: boycott or participate.
House Democrats had watched in the last Congress as Republican leader Kevin McCarthy removed his members from a Democratic-led select committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack and then found themselves without a voice in televised hearings nationwide. national. After debating the matter internally, Democrats were determined not to make the same mistake.
So, after a roughly two-hour tour of the jail on Friday, as Ms. Greene finished her remarks to reporters gathered outside, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, stepped up to the microphones.
“Someone has to be here to tell the truth,” said Ms. Crockett, a first-time member of Congress and a former public defender. “If we weren’t here, there would be no verification of whatever they said.”
Ms. Crockett is familiar with prisons in Texas and Arkansas, where she said inmates faced much harsher conditions. The nearly two dozen defendants at the DC facility charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack were housed in the newer part of the jail, had more open space and were given tablets for entertainment, she reported.
“My frame of reference comes from the jails in Arkansas, the jails in Texas. Listen, this is much different and much better,” Ms. Crockett said, adding that detainees elsewhere in the DC facility were in worse and more crowded conditions. “I don’t think the January 6ers wanted to go the other way.”
Earlier this month, House Republicans opened their long-promised investigation into whether people charged with crimes in connection with the Jan. 6 attack had been mistreated in a DC jail, fulfilling a promise party leaders had made. done to your right. The investigation, part of a broader effort by Republicans to rewrite the history of the riots in part by portraying the participants as the real victims, has been a top priority for Ms Greene, who wrote a report in 2021. about poor prison conditions and has significant influence among House Republicans.
Understanding the events of January 6
Ms. Greene and her fellow Republicans walked out of the facility Friday afternoon to a raucous scene with a handful of rowdy protesters. One repeatedly blew a whistle when Ms. Greene tried to speak to reporters, interrupting her. Another man yelled descriptions of the defendants’ crimes on January 6. “The Capitol Police were attacked!” the Scream. “They need to have long jail sentences!” One vehicle, paid for by a Democratic-aligned political group, displayed screens showing the violence on January 6, when some 150 officers were injured.
Ms Greene’s spokesperson at one point covered her ears as she tried to stop a protester from approaching her.
Speaking to television cameras, Ms Greene denounced a “two-tier justice system” in which the January 6 defendants were treated as “political prisoners”.
“They told us stories that they were denied medical treatment,” he said of his conversations with the defendants on January 6. “They told us stories of aggression. They told us stories of rape threats.”
Ms. Greene visited the jail in November 2021 and detailed her findings in a report published next month. She said that an inmate had reported that other detainees beat him and that no care was provided.
On Friday, he said conditions had improved since his last visit.
“In the whole jail, it was cleaner. It had been painted over,” Ms Greene said, adding: “They are allowed out of their cells much longer during the day.”
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican, credited the Republican-led tour for the improved cleaning of the facility: “They said in the last month or so, since we took Congress back, that it has gotten better,” she said. Mrs. Luna, referring to the detainees. “But they said they cleaned it up really well in the last few days since they knew we were coming.”
Seventeen of the 20 defendants being held in the DC jail on charges related to January 6 are accused of assaulting law enforcement officers during the attack on the Capitol. according to research by one of the lead authors of the Jan. 6 House committee report. The other defendants include a member of the Proud Boys and a member of the Oath Keepers, according to the report.
Under a different strategy, Democrats could have opted out of the tour, choosing to ignore an event many on the left saw as a stunt. But Rep. Robert Garcia of California said Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, asked him to attend to “ensure that there is a fair representation of what happened.”
“These people tried to overthrow our government,” Garcia said, adding: “While Marjorie Taylor Greene wants to treat these people like pseudo-celebrities, these people are insurgents and we can’t forget that.”
Mrs. Greene wrote to DC Mayor Muriel Bowser earlier this month seeking all documents and communications regarding complaints from those detained on January 6 regarding conditions. The investigation arises when the Republicans, two years after the mob attack on the Capitol, they have divided by topicwith many in the party wanting to move on, seeing the riot as a political responsibility, while a more vocal group pushes to re-litigate it.
Many in the party’s far-right base believe the rioters were justified in opposing an election that former President Donald J. Trump falsely claims was stolen.
Mr. Trump even recently recorded a contribution to a song with the defendants called “Justice for All.” which reached number 1 on iTunes.
But in defending the rights of the January 6 defendants, Republicans have touched on the issue of prison reform and may find common ground with Democrats.
Civil rights advocates have long been concerned about conditions in the DC jail. The facility received increased attention as defendants charged in connection with the January 6 attack were housed there, with their lawyers raising concerns about threats from guards, stagnant sewage, and shortages of food and water. .
A federal judge in 2021 held top DC jail officials in contempt of courtruling that they had improperly delayed the medical treatment of a defendant on January 6 who was in their custody.
The jailhouse inquiry is one of several demands made by right-wing lawmakers as McCarthy sought their votes during weeks of intense negotiations in his campaign for the top House job. He also authorized the release of more than 40,000 hours of Capitol Hill security footage from January 6, 2021 to Fox News host Tucker Carlson. who used the video to try to downplay the violence of the day and reframe the attack as a largely peaceful gathering. And McCarthy approved a subcommittee, headed by Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, to investigate the work of the House Jan. 6 committee for signs of bias.
When asked if she was involved in covering up the events of January 6, Ms. Greene replied that others were covering up riots carried out by left-wing groups.
“Both the Democrats and the media are whitewashing all the things that happened with the antifa protests, BLM, and riots across the country in 2020,” he said. “I don’t know why we have to forget about that, but we have to keep arresting 1,000 more people by January 6.”
