Deputy Marjorie Taylor Greene stormed into the District of Columbia Jail to check on the conditions of the January 6 defendants, as Republican lawmakers shook hands and the inmates high-fived, who chanted Let’s go, Brandon! a coded vulgarity against President Biden as the group left.

A day earlier, speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) met with the mother of slain rioter Ashli ​​Babbitt, an Air Force veteran who was shot and killed by police as she walked through a broken window during the January 6, 2021 tried to climb. , attack on the Capitol.

And the Republican leader of the House recently gave Fox News Tucker Carlson exclusive access to a trove of surveillance tapes from January 6, despite conservative commentators broadcasting conspiracy theories about the Capitol bombing.

All things considered, it can be assumed that the House Republicans are working steadily but determinedly to distort the facts of the deadly riot, which played out for the world as Donald Trump’s supporters laid siege to the Capitol, and in the process increased the risk of domestic violence. trivialize. extremism in the US

In actions and legislation, Republicans are trying to portray the perpetrators of the Capitol uprising as victims of zealous federal prosecutors, despite many having been convicted of serious crimes. As Trump calls for the January 6 defendants to be pardoned, some House Republicans are seeking to rechristen those who stormed the Capitol as political prisoners.

The result is alarming to those who recognize a dangerously Orwellian attempt to whitewash recent history.

There is no question that Marjorie Taylor Greene and other Republicans are trying to rewrite history, said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. They make light of what was a serious attack on our democracy.

The tour Greene (R-Ga.) led at the local jail on Friday comes as nearly 1,000 people have been indicted by the Justice Department for attacking the extremist Oath Keepers’ Capitol leaders convicted of seditious conspiracy. The 20 or so defendants being held in jail, many on remand on serious federal charges, are among those who battled police at the Capitol, officials said, in what was at times a horrific bloody scene of violence and mayhem.

Greene told the Associated Press that the idea of ​​her trying to rewrite history is the stupidest thing she’s ever heard of, especially since the attack on the Capitol is captured in the 41,000 hours of video McCarthy made available to Fox News.

We can’t rewrite it all on video, Greene told the AP.

You can’t change history, but what we can do is expose the truth. That’s what we need to do, Greene said.

The country has been here before in the aftermath of the Civil War, when the Lost Cause movement sought to reframe the struggle to end slavery in the US as one of the rights of the state, and again in the years following the Civil Rights Movement as critics of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. questioned his transformative legacy.

In the House that is under Republican control this year, the new leadership openly questions what happened on January 6 and how the federal government investigates and prosecutes extremists. Outside groups are raising money and coming to the aid of the January 6 defendants.

Last week, a Republican-led subcommittee on the judiciary investigated the federal government’s treatment of parents who sometimes violently protested the school board’s policies as unfair.

next week, in the coming days,

the federal government’s new Republican Committee on Armaments will take effect

First 1st

Change freedom of expression on social media.

McCarthy warned that the federal government is labeling parents as domestic terrorists for showing up at school board meetings, though such prosecutions are extremely rare.

He was a reference to a 2021 Justice Department memo

Attorney General Att. Gene.

Merrick Garland responds to the National School Board

Association Assn.’s

Concerns about violent protesters at school board meetings. Garland had directed federal law enforcement to address what he called a disturbing spike in harassment of school officials.

The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee investigated the matter and released a report showing that in a federal investigation, the FBI interviewed a mother for allegedly telling a local school board that we’re coming to get you. In another, the FBI investigated a father who resisted COVID mask mandates after a federal hotline tipster said he “fits the profile of an insurgent because he goes on a rampage against the government and has a lot of guns and threatens them.” to use.

Parents should have the right to go to school board meetings and not be called terrorists, McCarthy said.

While Greene has said the U.S. Capitol bombing was wrong, during the visit to the jail on Friday, she said she believes there is a “dual justice system and the January 6 defendants are being treated as political prisoners because of their beliefs.”

Democrats on the tour said that is categorically false. While the local jail

came

has long been the subject of complaints the US Marshals made plans to move 400 detainees after a surprise inspection in 2021 found that parts of the facility do not meet minimum standards the January 6 defendants are housed in a newer wing that is not classified as was called problematic in the Marshals’ statement.

The two Democrats who joined the tour as members of the House Oversight Committee said they had both visited detention centers before. It’s probably as good as a prison can be, said Representative Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), a former public defender.

California Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia noted how the Republicans led by Greene treated the January 6 defendants like celebrities who shook hands and slapped their backs as lawmakers arrived at the jail.

As they left, the defendants chanted Let’s Go Brandon! sentence against Biden, he said in a tweet.

The most important thing to remember is that while Marjorie Taylor Greene and others want to treat these people as pseudo-celebrities, some of these people are insurgents, Garcia told reporters. And we must not forget that.

___This story has been corrected to reflect that Ashli ​​Babbitt was an Air Force veteran, not a Navy veteran.