Morning Wire XX
[0] More than 1 ,000 U .S. citizens have been charged for their role in the January 6th Capitol riot, while almost none of the people involved in another massive riot in the Capitol were charged.
[1] Are federal prosecutors allowing political bias to decide who's held accountable?
[2] In this episode, we discussed the federal prosecutor heading up the J6 cases and the disparity between the handling of those cases in the BLM and Antifa riots in D .C. I'm Daily Wire, editor -in -chief John Vickley, with Georgia Howe.
[3] It's Saturday, June 10th, and this is an extra edition of Morning Wire.
[4] Joining us to discuss the current status of the ongoing January 6th trials is Julie Kelly, Senior Writer for American Greatness.
[5] Julie, thanks for coming on.
[6] So you've been following the trials of J6 defendants for years now.
[7] Are these trials coming to an end?
[8] Where do we stand on these?
[9] Well, there are still trials ongoing.
[10] I would say that the most consequential trials are over, and that would be the proud boys and the oath keepers.
[11] So I think the most high -profile consequential ones are over for now.
[12] How many J6 defendants have actually been prosecuted and convicted so far?
[13] The total caseload is over 1 ,000 defendants right now.
[14] Roughly, I would say half a little more than half, have either been convicted at trial or taken plea agreements.
[15] Most of those plea deals are related to low -level misdemeanors like parading in the Capitol and the most common felony charge, which is obstruction of an official proceeding.
[16] Have any of these J6 defendants been cleared, acquitted of charges?
[17] Only a small handful.
[18] So in the Proud Boys trial, for example, you had five members of the Proud Boys who were facing a four -month trial, actually, for seditious conspiracy.
[19] Four of the five members were convicted of seditious conspiracy.
[20] You had some other charges.
[21] The jury acquitted some of those proud boys of.
[22] those charges.
[23] You had similar outcomes in the Oathkeeper's trials.
[24] So these are the two so -called militia groups that were involved in the events of January 6th.
[25] You had convictions for seditious conspiracy in three of those trials, but also acquittals for that very serious charge and acquittals on other counts as well.
[26] But I would say that the Department of Justice's conviction rate is hovering around 99 % before these D .C. juries, which of course is made up of jurors from a city that is almost 100 % democratic, highly biased even during the jury's selection process.
[27] Now, in your recent article titled three years later, no justice for BLM insurrection in DC, you compare the handling of the events of J6 and the BLM riots in D .C.'s Lafayette Square in 2020, how they've been treated totally differently by the DOJ.
[28] Tell us about the argument you're making there.
[29] Well, obviously, the events of 2020 for months where you had BLM, Antifa rioters, burning down parts of the city, trying to scale the walls and fence outside of the White House, causing the lockdown of the White House, as we all recall, confronting Republican lawmakers in the streets, harassing Trump supporters at the two rallies in November and December.
[30] But for comparison, Lafayette Square is the closest to what happened at the Capitol.
[31] Because Lafayette Square is a federal park, it's located right next to the White House or close to the White House.
[32] And those riots involved assaults on federal police officers, both Secret Service and Park Police.
[33] And the assault on those officers lasted for weeks.
[34] And in many cases were far more ambitious and injurious and dangerous than what happened for a few hours on on January 6th.
[35] So that's why I make that comparison.
[36] But unfortunately, only a small handful of those protesters face criminal charges.
[37] And DC U .S. Attorney Matthew Graves, a Biden appointee who continues to arrest people every single week.
[38] They just arrested a defendant on June 7th, is, completely memory hold what happened in 2020.
[39] He admitted that his predecessor dropped most of any small charges against those BLM rioters, and he has stopped investigating anything that happened, not just in Lafayette Square, but throughout the city.
[40] So I think when I talk with people, that's what upsets people the most is the double standard of justice, that it's okay to riot, assault police officers destroy federal property if it's for a quote -unquote social justice cause.
[41] But those same rules do not, still do not apply to January 6 defendants who are still being rounded up, arrested, and prosecuted.
[42] If you would, tell us more about Graves.
[43] What do we know about his record prior to taking on the J6 cases and how has he handled his new position?
[44] Well, prior to being appointed DC U .S. attorney, which has the unique authority of prosecuting both federal and local crimes in Washington, D .C. Matthew Grace was in private practice.
[45] He was actually the same law firm as Kamala Harris's husband.
[46] So he was appointed by Joe Biden in November of 2021, took on this sprawling.
[47] It is the largest criminal investigation by the U .S. Department of Justice ever.
[48] He took it over and quickly accelerated it.
[49] And a few weeks after he was confirmed by the Senate, that's when he started handing down the seditious conspiracy indictments.
[50] The Department of Justice was under fire, mostly by Democrats and the media, for not handing down harsher charges that would be similar to treason.
[51] So Matthew Graves stepped in and helped Merrick Garland protect himself from that criticism.
[52] At the same time, Matthew Graves is under fire by community leaders, politicians, and certainly the police department in Washington, D .C., because he has declined to prosecute roughly two -thirds of the cases brought to him by police.
[53] So he's very soft on crime when it comes to getting a hold of Washington, D .C.,'s really violent crime wave happening right now, while he uses most of his resources to fixate on what happened at the Capitol.
[54] So while he's refusing to charge violent criminals, repeat criminals in Washington, D .C., he's promising to double the caseload of January 6th defendants from over 1 ,000 to more than 2 ,000 defendants.
[55] In your article, you also mentioned a settlement between the BLM rioters from the events at Lafayette Square and the Justice Department.
[56] Tell us about that.
[57] What eventually led both parties to settle?
[58] I mean, this is really galling because as Matthew Graves talks about the capital siege and how this is a domestic terror attack and everyone must be held accountable, his office helped reach a settlement for BLM rioters who were suing police departments for excessive force used especially at Lafayette Square.
[59] And he sort of scolded the two police departments, especially Park police who were involved in protecting that area, these physical confrontations by BLM rioters trying to prevent them from scaling the walls at the White House.
[60] But instead of arresting those people in charging them accordingly, or at least comparably to January 6th defendants charged with assaulting police.
[61] He entered a settlement with these rioters, blaming police and telling them to clean up their act when it came to quote unquote peaceful demonstrations, as he called it.
[62] So again, it's just the hypocrisy out of that extremely powerful office.
[63] Of course, this is also the same part of the agency that exonerated the fatal shooting of Ashley Babbitt, no civil charges brought against that police officer.
[64] So, you know, it's all in the eye of the polder at the DCS attorney's office in DOJ, whose civil rights should be protected and defended and whose should not.
[65] And that is what my article and a lot of coverage of Matthew Graves of my reporting has brought to the public and to Congress as well.
[66] So final question, what is motivating this?
[67] Why this double standard?
[68] Why these completely different treatments of these two very similar situations?
[69] It is just the ongoing weaponization of the Department of Justice and the FBI.
[70] We see this playing out now with a cover -up of the Biden crime racket.
[71] And this is a really dangerous territory.
[72] And I will tell you where this is headed.
[73] The seditious conspiracy convictions, especially of the proud boys, really ramped up the legal jeopardy for Donald Trump to face the same sort of charge, which will be obviously unprecedented, but just further ratchet up.
[74] The DOJ is shameful, shameless, I guess, and really unaccountable use of its authority to punish the Biden regime's political enemies.
[75] Well, if we do have federal authorities, as they say, weaponizing the government, we need to call out those abuses of power.
[76] Julie, thanks so much for joining us.
[77] Thanks for having me on.
[78] That was Julie Kelly, senior writer for American greatness, and this has been an extra edition of Morning Wire.