A Former Jan. 6 Defendant Who Urged Rioters To ‘Kill’ Cops Is Now A Justice Department Senior Advisor. Surprised?
I’ve written before about how President Donald Trump is trying to rewrite what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, and what the event represents. The reason he wasted no time in his second term before he unilaterally pardoned or commuted the sentences of more than 1,500 Jan. 6 rioters, the reason he was toying around with the idea of paying reparations to Jan. 6 convicts, and the reason he keeps repeating the lie that the insurrectionists protested “peacefully and patriotically” is that, in his mind, it legitimizes what they did, and, by extension, what he did to instigate the domestic terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol.
This is also probably the reason he appointed a former Jan. 6 defendant to serve as a senior adviser for the Department of Justice.
Meet Jared Wise.
On Jan. 6, 2021, Wise was caught on camera berating police officers as they were being attacked by a rabid mob of MAGAts, calling them “Nazi” and “Gestapo” (I mean, it’s not like they were Trump administration ICE agents disappearing people into concentration camps without due process, but whatever) and urging rioters to “kill” Capitol police officers. (But “blue lives matter,” right?)
From NPR:
The Capitol building had been breached two hours earlier, with doors knocked off hinges and windows smashed. The air was thick with pepper spray. The vice president, along with members of Congress, had been forced to evacuate and halt the certification of the 2020 election, as rioters yelled, “give them the rope,” “hang Mike Pence” and “traitors get the guillotine.”
The Capitol grounds were almost entirely overrun with angry Trump supporters, many of whom had assaulted police with weapons including a bat, a hockey stick, stun guns, metal bars and chemical sprays. Law enforcement officers were bruised, bloodied and, in some cases, temporarily blinded from the attacks, but still trying to hold the line where they could.
At 4:21 p.m., Wise stepped up to a police line on the upper west terrace of the building.
Wise had already entered the Capitol through a door that was forced open, exiting about 10 minutes later through a broken window, according to charging documents. He remained on Capitol grounds for hours during the ongoing chaos.
“You guys are disgusting,” Wise can be heard shouting at officers, who were committing the egregious, heinous and “disgusting” crime of — *checks notes* — trying not to get killed while preventing violent thugs from disrupting the democratic process. “I’m former law enforcement. You’re disgusting. You are the Nazi. You are the Gestapo.” (Wise had served at the FBI from 2004 to 2017, where he worked in international counterterrorism, which, apparently, made him perfectly suited to become a cheerleader for domestic terrorism.)
“Shame on you,” Wise yelled as he stood in front of the police line. “Shame on you. Shame on you.”
Then, after violence had erupted again, and rioters viciously attacked officers, he could be heard shouting, “Kill ’em! Kill ’em! Get ’em! Get ’em!”
Since Wise was never involved in the physical violence against Capitol police officers (or at least he wasn’t caught on camera doing it), he wasn’t found guilty of anything (not that it would have mattered anyway since our commander-in-34-felonies would have given him a get-out-of-jail-free card anyway). But that still doesn’t explain why a man who was recorded on video egging on rioters who were tasing and beating on cops was tapped to have a commanding role in the Justice Department — or at least it would be inexplicable if we weren’t talking about the Trump administration.
Wise’s role is no surprise in a federal government where Robert Kennedy Jr., a COVID conspiracy theorist who spreads medical misinformation, advocates for medical racism, and takes his grandchildren swimming in toxic sewage, serves as Trump’s Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary. Trump’s Department of National Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, forgets to untag civilians in the Signal chat he’s sharing confidential war plans on, and, during his confirmation hearing, he was unable to answer basic questions about U.S. foreign policy. His education secretary, ex-pro wrestling CEO Linda McMahon, doesn’t know basic Black history. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem doesn’t know what habeas corpus is. ICE director Thomas Homan thinks informing immigrants of their legal rights is an arrestable offense. Trump ally Darren Beattie appointed to serve as the acting Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs despite having once said that for America to be run correctly, “competent white men must be in charge.”
Hell, while we’re on the subject of Jan. 6, Joe Kent, who Trump tapped to serve as director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), believes the rioters who broke through barricades, violently attacked police officers, and threatened lawmakers all because Trump spent months lying about the 2020 election being stolen from him are “political prisoners,” not criminals who tried to overthrow the government.
It’s almost as if every single person serving in Trump’s Cabinet is either corrupt, incompetent, racist, a terrorist sympathizer, or — much like our president — all of the above.
But MAGA, right?
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