MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough bashed House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA)for telling “lie after lie” to minimize the Jan. 6 insurrection.
The Louisiana Republican, who led a legal effort among House Republicans to invalidate Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss, has ordered the release of security video footage from the U.S. Capitol attack, but with the faces of rioters blurred out to protect them from being “retaliated against and to be charged by the DOJ.”
“Lie after lie after lie – I would love to see his Bible,” Scarborough said. “‘Look at my Bible, that’s how I live.’ Lie after lie after lie. He’s lying about transparency. Liz Cheney was saying yesterday, release all the tapes. He’s not going to release all the tapes. He’ll release selected portions of it. As far as the blurring of the faces, the FBI has all of the footage. They’ve got the footage. Who is he lying to? The press is not stupid enough to believe him. Is he insulting Republicans? Like, why would he lie like that? The FBI has all the footage, so the DOJ has all the footage. Who is he lying to? Maybe he’s just lying to himself, I don’t know. Again, it’s an interesting Bible he has there.”
A spokesperson for Johnson later clarified, saying the speaker wanted to protect participants from retaliation from unspecified non-governmental actors, but Washington Post congressional correspondent Jacqueline Alemany said his stance on Jan. 6 was clearly intended to bolster his position with the MAGA base.
“This is Johnson trying to curry favor with a growing pocket of the House GOP conference that, you know, has been campaigning on vying for freedoms for these insurrectionists,” Alemany said. “Johnson is realizing that his honeymoon is coming to an end as hardliners, especially those in the House Freedom Caucus, the same people who have been advocating for the insurrectionists, for what they have said, have claimed without evidence as the mistreatment behind bars, and this is Johnson just trying to show – even though it really, it doesn’t make all that much sense – he is behind them, and he sees them.”
According to the Department of Justice, more than 1,069 defendants have been charged in the Capitol assault, and at least 594 of them have pleaded guilty to a variety of charges. At least 98 have been convicted at trial, while another 24 have pleaded guilty.
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