Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) announced Thursday, on the first anniversary of the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol, that he was “ashamed of nothing” and that he and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) planned to retrace the steps of the rioters as if leading the faithful through the Holy Land.
The Florida congressman appeared on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast alongside Greene ― a fellow disciple of former President Donald Trump’s.
“We’re ashamed of nothing,” Gaetz said on the show. “We’re proud of the work we did on Jan. 6 to make legitimate arguments about election integrity. So we’re going to make those arguments today,” he said, plugging the press conference he and Greene planned for the afternoon.
Gaetz continued: “And we’re actually going to go walk the grounds that patriotic Americans walked from the White House to the Capitol who had no intent of breaking the law or doing violence.”
Of course, hundreds of people did break the law, and multiple people died during the chaos on Capitol Hill. Federal prosecutors have arrested more than 725 people for their participation in the riot, with more than 225 charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement officers. Around 140 police officers from the U.S. Capitol Police department and the Metropolitan Police Department were injured that day; one died soon afterward.
Trump had originally intended to hold a press conference of his own Thursday to mark the anniversary of the attack, but he canceled earlier this week ― reportedly at the behest of Republicans who worried about what he might say.
Instead, Gaetz and Greene stepped up. They previewed their media event Thursday morning with Bannon, who served as an adviser in the Trump White House for seven months in 2017, by rehashing baseless claims about the 2020 presidential election. The representatives claim the Justice Department did not go far enough to investigate potential voter fraud, even though former Attorney General William Barr specifically gave such investigations the green light. There was no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
Gaetz said he and Greene planned “to get to the truth behind Jan. 6,” spinning the attack as a noble tragedy that has been politicized by the other side.
“Democrats wanted to seize this day, they want to own this day, and they want to use it as a political cudgel not just against Republicans in Congress but against a patriotic, pro-America, God-fearing America First movement all over this great land,” Gaetz declared.
At their press conference, Gaetz and Greene alleged that the federal government may have had a hand in planning the Capitol riot and played clips of the attack that supposedly raised unanswered questions, but ultimately offered very little evidence.
“What if the FBI was involved?” Greene asked members of the media.
The idea that outsiders or undercover agents were behind the violence on Jan. 6 is a far-right conspiracy theory that has been debunked.
Both members of Congress pushed back at the suggestion they were contradicting Trump’s portrayal of the Jan. 6 attack ― as an outpouring of support from regular Americans ― although they did not go into detail.
How the attack unfolded with such little resistance from law enforcement is the subject of an ongoing investigation by a House select committee led by Reps. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.).
This story has been updated with details from Thursday’s press conference.