A day after Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign sent a fundraising email that called Jan. 6 rioters “activists,” it released a new statement on Friday suggesting that some of the insurrectionists may have been unfairly prosecuted by the Biden administration.
“January 6 is one of the most polarizing topics on the political landscape. I am listening to people of diverse viewpoints on it in order to make sense of the event and what followed. I want to hear every side,” the email began.
Though the message, attributed to Kennedy himself, acknowledged that many of the rioters had broken the law, he said he was “concerned about the possibility that political objectives motivated the vigor of the prosecution of the J6 defendants, their long sentences, and their harsh treatment.”
If elected, Kennedy said, he would appoint a special counsel to investigate possible prosecutorial misconduct.
The note seemed to soften the candidate’s position on the Jan. 6 insurrection. Soon after publishing the “activists” email on Thursday, the campaign retracted the statement, saying the language had been included by a “new marketing contractor” and did not reflect Kennedy’s views.
To the contrary, in Friday’s missive, the candidate said the allegedly aggressive prosecutions “would fit a disturbing pattern of the weaponization of government agencies—the DoJ, the IRS, the SEC, the FBI, etc.—against political opponents.”
He avoided making a definitive statement on the Capitol attack, which resulted in multiple deaths and scores of injuries.
“Because it happened with the encouragement of President Trump, and in the context of his delusion that the election was stolen from him, many people see it not as a riot but as an insurrection,” Kennedy wrote.
