Two days before former President Donald J. Trump was booked into an Atlanta jail on his fourth indictment, he was at a golf club in New Jersey with another group facing criminal charges: the Capitol Police on Jan. 6. They held an event for rioters accused of breaking into the area. , 2021.
Standing next to a portrait of himself dressed as James Bond, Trump told the defendants and their families: “They have suffered so much, but if I win another term, everything will change.” Told.
“People who have been treated unfairly will be treated very, very fairly,” he said to applause at an event in Bedminster, New Jersey, last August. What has happened is completely ridiculous,” he added. “But I'm sure it'll be okay.”
The private event symbolized Trump's embrace of dozens of defendants and their relatives in the Jan. 6 attack, as he campaigned for law and order and called for justice as needed. It highlighted the attempt to weaken the executive branch.
But in recent days, celebrations of the Capitol riot and those who took part in it have become more public as he promotes historical revisionism of the Capitol riot and made it a centerpiece of his 2024 presidential campaign. became.
Despite nearly 1,000 guilty pleas and convictions in criminal cases that began on January 6, Trump has repeatedly referred to the rioters who invaded the Capitol as “hostages” and has threatened to disrupt his campaign. At the beginning, the following recording was played. Riot defendants sing the national anthem from their cells.
He highlighted the so-called Freedom Corner movement, a vigil by activists and mob families who have gathered almost every night for nearly two years outside a Washington prison where some of the most violent rioters are being held. . When it appeared this year that Trump would go on trial in Washington on charges related to the Jan. 6 attack, aides discussed the idea of him visiting prison, according to a person not authorized to speak. said a person familiar with the discussions. publicly. That plan was postponed because of court delays.
By doing all this, Mr. Trump risks further radicalizing his most fervent supporters and encouraging them to repeat the events of January 6th.
“Violence has become normalized as a legitimate solution to political grievances,” said Robert Pape, a University of Chicago scholar who has studied American political violence after the Capitol attack. “So politically angry people are more likely to turn to it.”
President Trump makes the attack on the Capitol an issue in the general election
Most politicians would have avoided focusing on events that shocked the nation like January 6th, and polls consistently show that they have alienated volatile voters. ing. But Trump has placed increasing emphasis on January 6 in his general election campaign.
Trump's focus on January 6 presents a non-political opportunity for President Biden. Biden recently invited two Capitol Police officers who were attacked by rioters to speak at his campaign event. As part of his message of defending democracy, he has repeatedly described the storming of the Capitol as one of the nation's darkest days.
“President Trump said there was 'a lot of love' on January 6th,” Biden said in a January speech in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, adding that “the rest of the country, including law enforcement, There was a lot of hatred and violence.” ”
Still, Trump has a long history of creating alternate versions of reality when it works to his advantage. And he, who has struggled to expand his voting coalition throughout his three campaigns, appears to recognize that the issues surrounding Jan. 6 are motivating his base. This subject matter has helped him bond with his supporters by portraying them the way he wants to portray them, as victims of an overrun federal law enforcement system.
“I think he genuinely cares about us and our families,” said Will Pope, a Kansas man who attended the Bedminster event and is accused of, among other things: “I don't think they're doing it just for political reasons,” he said. His flagpole was pushed into the door of the Senate vehicle as police were attempting to close it.
“He sensed a growing concern that the Department of Justice and the government in general were taking a hard line against the American people,” he added.
Trump campaign spokeswoman Caroline Levitt said the Justice Department under Biden spent more time prosecuting the January 6 defendants and Trump than “criminals, illegal immigrants, terrorists.” Ta. She added that “President Trump will restore justice to all Americans who have been wronged by Joe Biden's two-tier justice system.”
How President Trump reversed the Capitol riot
Trump hasn't always embraced January 6th — at least not openly.
At the urging of his advisers, the president publicly denied the attack, despite his strong protests behind closed doors that the election was over, according to the House Select Committee that investigated the attack.
But soon Trump began to join the growing effort to revise the history of the Capitol attack. In doing so, he has often followed the lead of far-right lawmakers, including Georgia's Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who in turn has followed the lead of a small but vocal group of right-wing journalists and activists.
Trump's embrace on January 6 was not just about describing the attack that left more than 100 police officers injured as a “festival of love.” He also told journalists that he wanted to march to the Capitol that day, but his team prevented him from doing so.
At a rally in Texas in January 2022, Trump teased an eventual presidential bid, saying if re-elected he would consider pardoning those involved in the assault, something he said It's a promise I've often repeated.
The pivotal moment in Trump's reversal of the attack came six months later.
In July 2022, one of his top aides, Liz Harrington, contacted Julie Kelly, a conservative journalist who has written extensively about the Capitol attack and the defendants charged with participating in it.
Harrington asked Trump what he could do “to help these people,” Kelly recalled. She responded that there was little that could be done about their bail, but that Trump should educate himself on the larger legal issues surrounding Jan. 6. Mr. Kelly suggested a meeting with Cynthia Hughes, the founder of the Patriot Freedom Project and a prominent politician. January 6th Legal Defense Fund.
Mr. Trump's aides initially balked at the idea of meeting with Mr. Hughes, Mr. Kelly recalled. Hughes' nephew, Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, who was indicted on charges stemming from the Capitol attack, was also an avowed Nazi sympathizer who liked to take pictures of himself dressed as Hitler.
But in the end, Kelly and Hughes were granted an audience with Trump in Bedminster in September 2022. Mr. Kelly said he told the former president that his support for the defendant and Mr. Hughes on January 6 was not sufficient. They felt abandoned by him. The two women also told Trump that some of the federal judges he has put on his court are “among the worst” in handling hundreds of criminal cases stemming from the Capitol attack. he said.
After the meeting, Trump donated $10,000 to Hughes' organization. Around the same time, he told conservative radio host Wendy Bell, “I support some incredible people financially, and they actually came to my office two days ago.'' “It was,” he said. Trump later voiced his support in a video at one of the group's fundraising events at a Washington hotel.
“In my opinion, people have been treated very unfairly, in violation of the Constitution, and we're going to get to the bottom of it,” he said in the video.
Trump also spoke about Mickey Wittthoff, the mother of Ashli Babbitt, a rioter who was shot and killed by a Capitol Police lieutenant on January 6 and who is seen by many on the right as a kind of political martyr. He also mentioned Mr. To.
“He talked about Ashli and said he was thinking about Ashli and that she was in his heart,” Wittoft said. Online video in which she details the call With Trump at one of the nightly protests at Freedom Corner.
Mr. Trump's top aides and allies in Congress, such as Ms. Taylor Greene, have also piqued Mr. Trump's interest in what they describe as the January 6 defendant's living in squalid conditions in a Washington prison. Ta. But these conditions existed long before the rioters arrived, and at this point only about 15 or 20 of the rioters are in prison.
By that point, Trump had hired Joanna Miller Wisher, a former aide to Peter Navarro. He previously served as Trump's White House trade adviser and is currently in jail for contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the House of Representatives on January 6th. Committee. Mr. Wisher, whose involvement in Mr. Trump's political action committee was first reported by news outlet Semaphore, quickly became a defender of sorts within the campaign against the January 6 rioters.
Another issue helped shape Trump's thinking about the Capitol attack and those who took part in it. That's the scene from the Jan. 6 televised hearing held by a House committee that summer and fall. Mr. Trump has been unable to accept defeat in the 2020 presidential election, and several former aides have spoken publicly about his helplessness in the face of violence in January, according to people with direct knowledge of his thinking. He said he became furious when he saw him testify on the spot. 6.
How did the January 6th prisoners become “hostages”?
Trump's use of the word “hostage” to describe the suspects who took part in the Capitol attack is one of his most outlandish attempts to change the history of January 6. . At least that's what Trump used to describe it: Little goes beyond the unfounded and distorted view that those who come into contact with the criminal justice system for their role in the riot are treated unfairly.
During the Justice Department's massive investigation into the Capitol attack, the number of defendants jailed pretrial has tended to hover around 5% to 10% of the total number indicted. However, that number has decreased significantly in recent months.
The defendants, who were imprisoned before trial, were among the most violent members of the mob, including firing a pistol into the air while standing on a scaffold above the mob, and plotting to kill an FBI agent conducting an investigation. , is charged with planning to commit other serious crimes.
One of Trump's associates said the former president began using the word “hostage” months after he recorded a version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” with the musical group “January 6th Choir.” He said he noticed that. It is made up of rioters serving sentences in a Washington prison. Trump has insisted on playing the song at some of his rallies, and has occasionally played it at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, in some cases during performances of the song. All the guests on the patio stand up and put their hands over their hearts.
One of the producers of the recording was Kash Patel, a Trump aide who served as the head of the Pentagon in the final years of his administration. Through a spokesperson, Patel denied that he had any role in persuading Trump to use the word “hostage” in his speech.
At a campaign event in Ohio last month, Trump stood by as an announcer called on the crowd to rise up because of the “horrible mistreatment of the hostages on January 6th.” Trump then saluted and repeated those words as the recording played.
“You can feel the spirit of the hostages, that's what they are,” Trump said, adding that the men were “incredible patriots.”
Critics, including federal judges who have handled January 6-related cases, said justifying that day's events increases the risk that it will happen again.
While sentencing a man who assaulted police on January 6th to more than seven years in prison, prominent Washington judge Royce C. He voiced concern that this would set a precedent. adversary or government agency. ”
“This is not normal,” Judge Lamberth said. “This cannot become normal. We, as a community, as a society, as a country, cannot tolerate the normalization of the January 6th Capitol riot.”
michael gold Contributed to the report.