January 6 Committee Member Jamie Raskin Wanted No ‘Backlash’ for 1992’s LA Rioters

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) — a member of the January 6 Committee investigating the riot at the Capitol last year — said after the Los Angeles riots in May 1992 that he hoped then-President George H. W. Bush did not “encourage” any type of “backlash against the rioting” which occurred.

Following the infamous Los Angeles riots, which broke out in the city after police officers were acquitted of beating black motorist Rodney King, now-congressman Raskin said that he would have hoped President Bush did not “anticipate or encourage a backlash against the rioting.”

“People sense that justice was not done in the verdict that came down in the state criminal court,” Raskin added when discussing the trial.

He also acknowledged that he wanted there to be no backlash for the rioters who burned and looted across Los Angeles also said, “I think that there was a clear miscarriage of justice, which the Justice Department has an obligation to act on now.”

Raskin was not alone.

January 6 Committee Chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) also previously declined to take a public “stand against violence” and rioting as “acceptable responses” to an unwelcome court ruling of an upcoming trial, at the time, where white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith was on trial for the murder of NAACP leader Medgar Evers.

Breitbart News unearthed from a 1992 article in Mississippi’s Clarion-Ledger that revealed that following the notorious 1992 Los Angeles riots, Hinds County Bar Association President Hal Miller Jr., asked Thompson if he would “take a stand in favor of the principle of law” and oppose “unwarranted criticism and riots” as “acceptable responses to displeasure with a judicial decision.”

In response, Thompson said, “I was offended that a person I don’t know would write me a letter basically saying it’s my responsibility to see that nothing happens because of the Beckwith trial.” The Clarion-Ledger report says now-Congressman Thompson pivoted from addressing the riots, and instead pushed back, asking why “the association did not speak out in the past about injustices against blacks or the lack of black elected officials.”