House Republicans have promised to tighten the purse strings to deal with the Justice Department after they heard testimony from Jan. 6 defendants and their families who say a hyper-politicized justice system mistreated them.
After a hearing featuring the Jan. 6 defendants, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said the appropriations process was the best way to hold the Justice Department and FBI accountable.
“Our power here in the house is the power of the purse. And Appropriations is our tool to hold the weaponized government accountable. And that is what our focus is right now,” she told reporters at the Capitol.
She also said some of her Republican colleagues would be on the other side of the clash over DOJ funding: “It’s going to be a fight.”
On Jan. 6, 2021, a mob of pro-Trump protesters stormed the Capitol to stop the certification of President Biden’s election win. Since then, more than 1,030 people have been charged with crimes related to the riot and nearly 570 people have pleaded guilty, according to the Justice Department.
Supporters of the Justice Department’s pursuit of Jan. 6 rioters describe the attack on the Capitol as an attack on democracy and an attempted coup.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, Florida Republican, organized the hearing Tuesday to hear the grievances of Jan. 6 protesters who were caught up in the justice system.
Among the Jan. 6 defendants who testified was Brandon Straka, a former Democrat who quit the party and founded the #WALKAWAY campaign.
He was sentenced to three years of probation in January 2022 on one misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct.
Mr. Straka described his arrest by FBI agents nearly two weeks after he took video of the Jan. 6 riot outside the Capitol.
“A team of FBI agents raided my home on the morning of Monday, January 25. I was gotten out of bed and handcuffed and told that I was facing multiple felony charges for what I had done,” he told lawmakers.
“The agents began stripping my apartment of computers, phones, iPads, thumb drives, hard drives, camera equipment, clothing and more. I was taken to jail, strip-searched, given an orange inmate uniform, locked in an 8-by-8 concrete cell with a metal door, and told that I was being placed in 23-hour lockdown.”
Another witness, Geri Perna, the aunt of Jan. 6 defendant Matt Perna, who committed suicide after the Justice Department informed him he would be charged with terrorism, tearfully described her nephew’s story.
She said her nephew was told he would most likely face a fine and nothing else, and his attorney said his sentence would be less if he made a deal and pleaded guilty to the charges.
“That was perhaps the greatest lie of all,” she said. “In fact, that deal was a trap. And the terms meant nothing to the DOJ because after Matt pled guilty, the prosecutor decided to present a sentencing enhancement of terrorism.”
John Strand testified before the Republican lawmakers that the D.C. jury pools and judges that Jan. 6 defendants faced are stacked against them.
A jury in the city found Mr. Strand guilty of the felony charge of obstruction of an official proceeding and four misdemeanor offenses. These were entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building, and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.
“I was convicted by an openly prejudiced D.C. jury, and I was recently sentenced to nearly three years in prison and another three years probation by a judge who explicitly stated from the bench that his punishment was intensified by his resentment of my public criticisms of the government,” he said.
Many Jan. 6 defendants were swept up in a vast dragnet that he said violated the Fourth Amendment, said Jeff Clark, a senior fellow and director of litigation at Center for Renewing America, a conservative advocacy group.
“This was done through the use of geofencing technology and cell phone data warrants sent to telecom providers,” he told the lawmakers at the hearing.
Mr. Clark argued that the Justice Department did not treat Jan. 6 defendant cases with appropriate respect for the First Amendment rights of the protesters.
“The Jan. 6 defendants have not been dealt with in the same fashion as the Antifa and BLM protesters in 2020, who engaged in terrible conduct, threatened the White House, did millions of dollars of damage to property in that summer in the lead up to the presidential election,” he said.
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
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