Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) grilled U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday about the apparent double standard in prosecutions of January 6 rioters for offenses that Democrats in Congress had allegedly committed without consequence.
Garland was appearing at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee. Democrats used the hearing to press Garland on potential prosecutions of Steve Bannon and other witnesses who had resisted subpoenas to the January 6 committee.
Republicans countered by focusing on the Department of Justice’s recent effort to crack down on parents protesting school board policies, and on other instances in which the department appeared to be pursuing a partisan political agenda.
After committee chair Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) began by claiming the January 6 was a “pre-planned” assault on the government, Gohmert prodded Garland to confirm that none of the January 6 defendants had been charged with insurrection.
Gohmert then stated:
On June 22 of 2016, judge, most of the Democrat members of Congress took over the House floor, and for the first time in American history, members of Congress obstructed official proceedings, not for four to six hours, but for virtually 26 hours. Not just violating over a dozen House rules, but actually committing the felony that some of the January 6th people are charged with. That was during the Obama administration. Nobody has been charged, and those kind of things, where you let Democrat members of Congress off for the very thing that you’re viciously going after people that were protesting on January 6th, give people the indication that there is a two-tiered justice system here in America.
Gohmert also suggested that pre-trial confinement for many of the January 6 rioters was being “abused,” unconstitutionally, as a form of punishment.
Garland also said that while there had been FBI informants among the rioters in the Capitol on January 6, he did not think they were among those who had destroyed glass or other property during the riot.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.