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WASHINGTON — Home Republicans on Thursday started their promised investigation into whether or not individuals charged with crimes in reference to the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol have been mistreated in jail, fulfilling a pledge G.O.P. leaders made to their proper flank.
The investigation — a part of a broader effort by Republicans to rewrite the historical past of the riot partly by portraying individuals because the true victims — has been a prime precedence of Consultant Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia.
On Thursday, Ms. Greene wrote to the D.C. mayor, Muriel Bowser, demanding solutions to questions, a tour of the correctional facility in southeastern Washington, and entry to employees and inmates to conduct interviews by March 23. She and two different lawmakers additionally requested for all paperwork and communications concerning the Jan. 6 detainees’ complaints concerning the situations.
“Eyewitness accounts of situations on the D.C. jail services — notably concerning the remedy of Jan. 6 detainees — paint an image of despair, hopelessness, and a extreme abuse of justice,” Ms. Greene wrote within the letter, which was additionally signed by Consultant James R. Comer, Republican of Kentucky and the chairman of the Oversight Committee, and Consultant Clay Higgins, Republican of Louisiana. “No prisoner in the US needs to be handled on this vogue.”
The investigation comes as Republicans, two years after the mob assault on the Capitol, have cut up over Jan. 6. Many within the social gathering regard the riot as a political legal responsibility and want to concentrate on financial or different coverage points. However a louder group desires to relitigate it publicly to feed the anger of the social gathering’s hard-right base, which reveres former President Donald J. Trump and believes the rioters had been justified in standing up towards an election he falsely claims was stolen.
Perceive the Occasions on Jan. 6
Ms. Greene visited the jail in November 2021 and detailed her findings in a report launched the subsequent month. She mentioned one inmate reported being crushed by different detainees and never being offered care. One other confirmed proof of getting a fractured bone that was left untreated, she mentioned.
Civil rights advocates have lengthy been involved about situations on the D.C. jail. However they acquired elevated consideration after the Jan. 6 assault, when a number of dozen of the arrestees started being housed there.
Their legal professionals raised considerations about threats from guards, standing sewage and scant meals and water. A federal decide held prime officers of the D.C. jail in contempt of courtroom, ruling that they had improperly delayed medical remedy for a defendant stored of their custody in reference to the Jan. 6 assault.
The lawmakers mentioned they had been centered on whether or not Jan. 6 defendants had been receiving worse remedy than different detainees. Ms. Greene mentioned detainees advised her that they had been denied entry to a Bible and Communion as a result of that they had refused to take the coronavirus vaccine.
The investigation on the jail is considered one of a number of calls for made by right-wing lawmakers as Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, sought their votes throughout weeks of intense negotiations in his marketing campaign for the highest job within the Home. In a closed-door assembly of Republicans in November, right-wing lawmakers together with Ms. Greene extracted a promise that their leaders would examine Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Justice Division for his or her remedy of defendants jailed in reference to the Jan. 6 assault.
Mr. McCarthy additionally approved the discharge of greater than 40,000 hours of Capitol safety footage from Jan. 6, 2021, to the Fox Information host Tucker Carlson, who used the video to try to minimize the violence of Jan. 6 and recast the assault as a largely peaceable gathering.
Mr. McCarthy additionally has approved a subcommittee to research the occasions surrounding the Capitol breach, warning the Home committee that investigated Jan. 6 final 12 months to protect its recordsdata. He appointed Consultant Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, a Republican he views as being unfairly maligned by the Jan. 6 panel, because the chairman of a Home Administration subcommittee assigned to research safety failures and assessment the Home Jan. 6 committee’s work for indicators of bias.
Jonathan Swan contributed reporting.
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