RFK Jr. parrots Trump on ‘weaponization’ over Jan. 6 prosecutions

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that he would appoint a special counsel to investigate whether Donald Trump's supporters were subject to politically motivated prosecutions after Jan. 6, 2021.

In a statement Friday seeking to clarify his position on the Capitol attack, Kennedy questioned whether the riot qualified as an “insurrection”; echoed Trump’s claims that the prosecution of its participants was politically motivated; and said he was “disturbed by the weaponization of government” against the former president.

“Like many reasonable Americans, I am concerned about the possibility that political objectives motivated the vigor of the prosecution of the J6 defendants, their long sentences, and their harsh treatment,” the independent candidate said in the nearly 500-word statement. He wrote that the prosecutions fit “a disturbing pattern of the weaponization of government agencies.”

The special counsel would be "an individual respected by all sides," he wrote, vowing to “right any wrongs that we discover."

The pledge came a day after Kennedy sent out two fundraising emails claiming rioters who had been charged with crimes related to the breach of the Capitol were “activists sitting in a Washington DC jail cell stripped of their Constitutional liberties.” The emails compared them to Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, and Edward Snowden, the source of the largest leak of NSA documents to journalists. Neither was involved in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Trump has also called those charged with crimes after Jan. 6 “patriots” and “hostages.”

Kennedy began his long-shot run for president as a Democrat, but relaunched as an independent in October over concerns that the party was moving away from its original values. Kennedy is now drawing attacks from both parties as he maintains a polling average of about 12 percent nationally with Democrats paying for advertising highlighting donations he’s accepted from a Republican megadonor, and Trump referring to him as a “the most Radical Left Candidate” on Truth Social.

After media reports about his fundraising emails on Thursday, the campaign said that Kennedy did not write the emails himself, and the person who did has been fired.

“That statement was an error that does not reflect Mr. Kennedy's views. It was inserted by a new marketing contractor and slipped through the normal approval process. The campaign has terminated its contract with this vendor. Anybody who violated the law on Jan. 6 should be subject to appropriate criminal and/or civil penalties,” campaign spokesperson Stefanie Spear said in a statement on Thursday about the fundraising email.

The campaign declined to say who the contractor was.

Kennedy’s Friday statement acknowledged that the law was broken on Jan. 6, but also said that participants in the Capitol riot had “had no plans or ability to seize the reins of government.”

“Because it happened with the encouragement of President Trump, and in the context of his delusion that the election was stolen from him, many people see it not as a riot but as an insurrection,” he said.

This is part of a pattern for Kennedy. Earlier this week in an interview on CNN, Kennedy also said that he “could argue” that Trump’s role in Jan. 6 was less of a threat to democracy than government censorship from President Joe Biden’s administration. Kennedy defended his comments in a follow up interview on NewsNation the next evening.

Last October, he asked in an interview with POLITICO: “What do you think is more dangerous… The censorship by the government of Americans who disagree with its policies or Jan. 6?”

The Jan. 6 riot has been the subject of numerous reports and video investigations. A bipartisan special committee in the U.S. House released a nearly 1,000 page report on the incident based on multiple hearings and almost 1,200 interviews.

"I have not examined the evidence in detail, but reasonable people, including Trump opponents, tell me there is little evidence of a true insurrection," Kennedy wrote.

He previously told The Washington Post in a candidate survey that he would pardon rioters charged with crimes after Jan. 6 “if prosecutorial malfeasance is demonstrated, then yes. Otherwise, no."

Kennedy closed his Friday statement with a criticism of the political establishment, arguing that both parties use Jan. 6 to divide the country.

“Instead of demonizing our opponents as apocalyptic threats to democracy, let’s focus on the issues and priorities of how they will govern, and defeat them at the ballot box rather than through legal maneuvers and dirty tricks.”