In a fundraising email Thursday, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called Jan. 6 defendants "activists" who had been "stripped of their Constitutional liberties," echoing former President Donald Trump's rhetoric about the 2021 Capitol riot.
Using "Team Kennedy," the campaign advocated for the exoneration of "political prisoner Julian Assange," the creator of WikiLeaks, and Jan. 6 defendants, claiming prosecutorial mistreatment.
"Every American—from Ed Snowden to Julian Assange to the J6 activists in a Washington DC detention cell without Constitutional rights—faces this reality. "Help our campaign expose our government's illiberality," stated the fundraising email.
Australian national Assange is being considered for extradition to the US by a British court. Snowden is in exile in Russia after leaking national security secrets.
Trump labeled his fans who stormed the Capitol because they believed his 2020 presidential election lies “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots” who were victimized by the legal system.
Capitol attack suspects number over 1,350, and prosecutors have convicted over 950. Most Jan. 6 offenders receive probation, but roughly 500 have been sentenced to a few days in prison to 22 years in federal prison for seditious conspiracy.
California congressional primary tie suggests November three-way race Kennedy told Fox News' Neil Cavuto last month that if elected president, he would pardon Assange and Snowden "very quickly" but "look at individual cases" when asked about Jan. 6 defendants.
He suggested on CNN earlier this week that President Joe Biden is a worse threat to democracy than Trump because he has supposedly repressed political critics, but he later clarified that those comments were taken out of context and that Trump and Biden are both troublesome. "I didn't say definitively whether I believed one or the other was more dangerous for democracy, I did say that I don't believe either of them will destroy democracy," he told News Nation Tuesday.
"You have one president who allegedly hasn't been convicted, but allegedly was trying to overthrow an election illegally, which is horrible for democracy," Kennedy said of Trump before turning to Biden. "You had another president who actually has censored speech."
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