Lawmakers who participated in the Jan. 6 attacks and the planning of the attack on the Capitol have never been held accountable for their involvement. It's something that former acting solicitor general Neal Katyal says has "emboldened" them.
MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace played a clip of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) ranting to Gabriel Sterling, the COO of the Georgia Secretary of State, that the 2020 election was fake, Donald Trump won and that thousands of dead people voted. The facts have been proven over and over again. The special grand jury in Georgia went so far as to say that the fraud Greene claimed wasn't true. The new grand jury that will begin this month will have an opportunity to confirm the findings.
Wallace said it's difficult sometimes to decide whether to elevate the ravings of people like Greene, but Katyal argued that Americans should be aware that a leading member of Congress allied with the Speaker of the House is still lying about the 2020 election.
"It really does highlight what happened to the party of Abraham Lincoln, the party of Ronald Reagan," said Katyal. "The idea that this person is leading anything is even being put on TV alone! So, forget about holding a position of power and being so close to the speaker is, to me unfathomable. Everything she says is a lie. Indeed, you don't have to take my word for it. you can take the words of Tucker Carlson or, you know, Laura Ingraham or all the people whose texts now say yeah, all of this was bogus and not true."
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He went on to say that it concerns him about the health of the American democracy when someone like Greene is put in power by a major political party and not prosecuted.
"If you talk to prosecutors, one of the things they say about criminals is if you don't indict, if you don't do something right away, it encouraging and incentivizes them to do something worse the next time, that you've got to teach them their lesson," he said. "And here you've got members of Congress, not everyone, and not every Republican, of course, but some members who were deeply involved in Jan. 6. And that requires investigation; thorough investigation. And yes, they'll throw up all sorts of stuff like speech or debate immunity. The same thing that Vice President Mike Pence is trying to argue now. But it's pretty easy for prosecutors to get past all that."
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He said that he's worried about it because there have been two years without any investigation into the members of Congress.
"Now we're seeing the consequences. They feel emboldened," Katyal continued. "I can't say I think it's the greatest idea in the world to give the very people who are willing to attack the Capitol access to the video footage that shows where they went wrong the first time, but that's what's going on right now. And, you know, so, yes, I think there very much should have been a serious investigation and all outward signs are there was not one at least when it comes to members of Congress."
Wallace agreed with Katyal, saying, "They don't feel emboldened. They are emboldened."
See the discussion in the video below or at the link here.
Republicans are 'emboldened' because there has been no accountability for J6: ex-White House lawyer youtu.be
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