A federal judge has taken the unusual step of sending a letter to the “friends and allies” of a convicted Capitol Rioter, warning them to stop saying that the man did “nothing wrong” and to stop condoning and downplaying political violence. While the letter was supposedly meant for the convict’s inner circle, it read more like a warning to the Republican Party itself that continues to downplay what happened on January 6th. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
A federal judge this week that has been serving on the bench since he was appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1987, decided that he’s had enough of these Capitol rioters that have come into his courtroom and said, oh, gee, I’m sorry. And then of course, you get all the supporters of the Capitol rioters, their friends and families writing letters saying, oh, he’s a good guy. She’s a great gal. You shouldn’t punish this person for storming the Capitol and in this particular case this week, threatening to murder lawmakers if they had seen them in the Capitol. So this Judge Royce Lamberth, a conservative judge, been there for 37 years at this point, which is a little too long if you ask me. But Lamberth has had enough. So he wrote a letter to all the friends and family and supporters of this convicted Capitol rioter, who had voiced their support for him, ordered his clerk to mail out 20 copies of the letter to 20 different people that were supporting this guy.
And in the letter he said, quote, January 6th must not become a precedent for further violence against political opponents or governmental institutions. This is not normal. This cannot become normal. We as a community, we as a society, we as a country, cannot condone the normalization of the January 6th Capitol riot. Now, this letter, 20 copies, as I said, sent to the friends and family of this particular defendant who of course has been found guilty and will be going to prison. But this message was not for the friends and family of this Capitol rioter. It was not for the friends and family of other convicted Capitol rioters. No. This letter, the publicity surrounding it, and I think the judge knows this full well and this is why the judge did it, this isn’t a message to the family members. This is a message to the Republicans in Congress and to Donald Trump himself to stop condoning the actions of these people. Stop downplaying the actions that these people took this week.
I mean, hell, we even had Bobby Kennedy come out in the last couple days and say, well, I’m gonna investigate the politicization of the prosecutions and see if that actually happened. The judges are telling you, even the conservative judges are telling you, that didn’t happen. If anything, the judges have told us these Capitol rioters are getting off too light. They’re getting special treatment when they shouldn’t be. When the judges, especially when these conservative ones speak out against what the rest of their party is saying, we should listen. These are people that are trained and Lamberth, as I said, been there 37 years. He’s seen it all, done it all. He knows when people are lying to him. He knows when somebody has genuinely made a mistake and feels remorse for it. They’re telling us these people don’t have actual remorse. It’s a show and they need to be punished accordingly. And again, if you ask me, that’s something that we all need to be listening to.
