Freshman Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) is dismissing her Republican colleagues’ concerns about the treatment of defendants from the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Crockett and Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) joined Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and other House Republicans on a trip to the jail where defendants from the riot are being held.
During a Friday appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Crockett said, “We know that these MAGA Republicans have a problem with the truth. In fact, that’s why we are coddling these Jan. 6 insurrectionists.”
“The fact that, you know, they want to go in. And these people, some of them which were attempting murder, and they want to have a conversation about how comfortable they are. They want to have a conversation about whether or not their iPads are working or if they have enough time on their iPads,” she continued.
Crockett went on:
“As someone who’s been a public defender, let me tell you something, they know nothing about what bad conditions are, and I’m going to clarify that after I can see with my own two eyes. But in the state of Texas, we don’t even have air conditioning in our prisons, and we are, once again, in the state of Texas, so we’ve had inmates die from overheating.”
Finally, the congresswoman added, “The idea that these folks should engage somehow in a real conversation now that Jan. 6ers, mostly white folk, are saying that these accommodations don’t work for them when Black and brown folk have been trying to have a real conversation around what prison accommodations should look like if we are just going to be humane is laughable.”
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Earlier this week, Greene tweeted, “I’m leading a bipartisan delegation from the Oversight Committee to the DC Jail on Friday.”
She told ABC News the visit would focus on “reports of abuse.”
“They’re pretrial, and they haven’t even been convicted, and they’re not allowed to see their families, many times are not allowed to see their attorneys — the food has been a major complaint,” she told the outlet.
She added, “There’s been complaints of it tasting like cleaner.”
ABC News noted, “The vast majority of defendants charged in connection with Jan. 6 have not been ordered to be detained pending trial, but in the several dozen cases where individuals have been held, a judge has determined that there’s no combination of conditions that could be placed on them to ensure that they either wouldn’t pose a danger to the general public or risk obstructing justice in their case.”
And a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. told the network, “As of today, approximately two dozen defendants, charged in the Capitol breach, are being held in pretrial detention.”
“Almost all of those detainees are charged with assaultive conduct, and none are charged with a misdemeanor,” the spokesperson added.