Robert F Kennedy Jr, the lawyer, conspiracy theorist and independent candidate for US president, vowed to investigate “whether prosecutorial discretion was abused for political ends” in convictions of January 6 rioters – just one day after his campaign said a fundraising reference to such prisoners as “activists” was an unfortunate error.
In a statement on Friday, Kennedy said that as president, he would “appoint a special counsel – an individual respected by all sides – to investigate whether prosecutorial discretion was abused for political ends in this case, and I will right any wrongs that we discover”.
On 6 January 2021, Donald Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol after the former president told them to “fight like hell” to block certification of his defeat by Joe Biden. Nine deaths are linked to the attack, including law enforcement suicides. More than 1,300 arrests have been made and nearly 1,000 convictions secured, some for seditious conspiracy. Some rioters have been held before trial.
Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection but acquitted when enough Senate Republicans stayed loyal. Now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Trump has called January 6 prisoners “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots”; promoted a rendition of the national anthem performed in a Washington jail; and said that if re-elected, he will “free the January 6 hostages being wrongfully imprisoned”.
Earlier this week, the Kennedy campaign ran into a media firestorm when a fundraising email referred to “J6 activists sitting in a Washington DC jail cell stripped of their constitutional liberties” and compared them to Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency whistleblower who lives in exile in Russia, and Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder held in the UK while the US seeks extradition.
Amid uproar, a Kennedy spokesperson said: “That statement was an error that does not reflect Mr Kennedy’s views. It was inserted by a new marketing contractor and slipped through the normal approval process.”
But on Friday, Kennedy indicated that he does think some January 6 prisoners might be activists wrongly imprisoned.
“January 6 is one of the most polarising topics on the political landscape,” he said. “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.
“It is quite clear that many of the January 6 protesters broke the law in what may have started as a protest but turned into a riot. 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.
“I have not examined the evidence in detail, but reasonable people, including Trump opponents, tell me there is little evidence of a true insurrection. They observe that the protesters carried no weapons, had no plans or ability to seize the reins of government, and that Trump himself had urged them to protest ‘peacefully’.”
That statement was in accordance with others, collected by NBC News, in which Kennedy has questioned or dismissed the severity of events on January 6.
Furthermore, the House committee that investigated January 6 detailed how protesters did carry weapons, some armed with guns; how Trump whipped up the crowd before belatedly appealing for calm; and how the riot followed lengthy attempts to find a legalistic way to keep Trump in power.
“Like many reasonable Americans,” Kennedy continued, “I am concerned about the possibility that political objectives motivated the vigour of the prosecution of the J6 defendants, their long sentences, and their harsh treatment.”
Echoing claims by Trump and Republicans in Congress, he said: “That would fit a disturbing pattern of the weaponisation of government agencies … against political opponents. One can, as I do, oppose Donald Trump and all he stands for, and still be disturbed by the weaponisation of government against him.”
Kennedy polls in double figures, has attracted millions of dollars in donations, has named a running mate (Nicole Shanahan, an attorney) and is seeking ballot access in key states. But he remains most likely to act as a spoiler in November, siphoning votes from both candidates but, many observers think, doing more damage to Biden.
In his Friday statement, Kennedy claimed to be following the example of the second US president, John Adams, “a staunch patriot” who in 1770 took on an unpopular task, “defend[ing] the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre”.
Kennedy also said Democrats as well as Republicans were “using J6 to pour fuel on the fire of America’s divisions”, and charged both parties with “demonising … opponents as apocalyptic threats to democracy”.
Many observers, however, view Kennedy himself as a threat to US democracy.
On Friday, before Kennedy issued his statement about January 6, Rahna Epting of Move On, a progressive advocacy group, and Matthew Bennett of Third Way, a centre-left group, described to reporters plans to switch from campaigning against No Labels, the centrist group that dropped out of the presidential race this week, to targeting Kennedy and his campaign.
“I want to be clear,” Epting said. “Robert Kennedy Jr’s ill-fated run for the presidency is helping put Donald Trump back in the White House and we’re going to work to stop that. Just as we organised against No Labels we’re going to organise against Robert Kennedy Jr. We’re going to let folks know we can’t win, but he can help Trump win.”
MONTREAL – A Quebec political party has voted to support one of its members facing backlash for saying that racialized people are regularly disparaged at the provincial legislature.
Québec solidaire members adopted an emergency resolution at the party’s convention late Sunday condemning the hate directed at Haroun Bouazzi, without endorsing his comments.
Bouazzi, who represents a Montreal riding, had told a community group that he hears comments every day at the legislature that portray North African, Muslim, Black or Indigenous people as the “other,” and that paint their cultures are dangerous or inferior.
Other political parties have said Bouazzi’s remarks labelled elected officials as racists, and the co-leaders of his own party had rebuked him for his “clumsy and exaggerated” comments.
Bouazzi, who has said he never intended to describe his colleagues as racist, thanked his party for their support and for their commitment to the fight against systemic racism.
Party co-spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois said after Sunday’s closed-door debate that he considers the matter to be closed.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 18, 2024.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Democrats who control both chambers of the Virginia legislature are hoping to make good on promises made on the campaign trail, including becoming the first Southern state to expand constitutional protections for abortion access.
The House Privileges and Elections Committee advanced three proposed constitutional amendments Wednesday, including a measure to protect reproductive rights. Its members also discussed measures to repeal a now-defunct state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and ways to revise Virginia’s process to restore voting rights for people who served time for felony crimes.
“This meeting was an important next step considering the moment in history we find ourselves in,” Democratic Del. Cia Price, the committee chair, said during a news conference. “We have urgent threats to our freedoms that could impact constituents in all of the districts we serve.”
The at-times raucous meeting will pave the way for the House and Senate to take up the resolutions early next year after lawmakers tabled the measures last January. Democrats previously said the move was standard practice, given that amendments are typically introduced in odd-numbered years. But Republican Minority Leader Todd Gilbert said Wednesday the committee should not have delved into the amendments before next year’s legislative session. He said the resolutions, particularly the abortion amendment, need further vetting.
“No one who is still serving remembers it being done in this way ever,” Gilbert said after the meeting. “Certainly not for something this important. This is as big and weighty an issue as it gets.”
The Democrats’ legislative lineup comes after Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, to the dismay of voting-rights advocates, rolled back a process to restore people’s civil rights after they completed sentences for felonies. Virginia is the only state that permanently bans anyone convicted of a felony from voting unless a governor restores their rights.
“This amendment creates a process that is bounded by transparent rules and criteria that will apply to everybody — it’s not left to the discretion of a single individual,” Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker, the patron of the voting rights resolution, which passed along party lines, said at the news conference.
Though Democrats have sparred with the governor over their legislative agenda, constitutional amendments put forth by lawmakers do not require his signature, allowing the Democrat-led House and Senate to bypass Youngkin’s blessing.
Instead, the General Assembly must pass proposed amendments twice in at least two years, with a legislative election sandwiched between each statehouse session. After that, the public can vote by referendum on the issues. The cumbersome process will likely hinge upon the success of all three amendments on Democrats’ ability to preserve their edge in the House and Senate, where they hold razor-thin majorities.
It’s not the first time lawmakers have attempted to champion the three amendments. Republicans in a House subcommittee killed a constitutional amendment to restore voting rights in 2022, a year after the measure passed in a Democrat-led House. The same subcommittee also struck down legislation supporting a constitutional amendment to repeal an amendment from 2006 banning marriage equality.
On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers voted 16-5 in favor of legislation protecting same-sex marriage, with four Republicans supporting the resolution.
“To say the least, voters enacted this (amendment) in 2006, and we have had 100,000 voters a year become of voting age since then,” said Del. Mark Sickles, who sponsored the amendment as one of the first openly gay men serving in the General Assembly. “Many people have changed their opinions of this as the years have passed.”
A constitutional amendment protecting abortion previously passed the Senate in 2023 but died in a Republican-led House. On Wednesday, the amendment passed on party lines.
If successful, the resolution proposed by House Majority Leader Charniele Herring would be part of a growing trend of reproductive rights-related ballot questions given to voters. Since 2022, 18 questions have gone before voters across the U.S., and they have sided with abortion rights advocates 14 times.
The voters have approved constitutional amendments ensuring the right to abortion until fetal viability in nine states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Ohio and Vermont. Voters also passed a right-to-abortion measure in Nevada in 2024, but it must be passed again in 2026 to be added to the state constitution.
As lawmakers debated the measure, roughly 18 members spoke. Mercedes Perkins, at 38 weeks pregnant, described the importance of women making decisions about their own bodies. Rhea Simon, another Virginia resident, anecdotally described how reproductive health care shaped her life.
Then all at once, more than 50 people lined up to speak against the abortion amendment.
“Let’s do the compassionate thing and care for mothers and all unborn children,” resident Sheila Furey said.
The audience gave a collective “Amen,” followed by a round of applause.
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Associated Press writer Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, contributed to this report.
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Olivia Diaz is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative.
NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump says he will nominate anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, putting him in charge of a massive agency that oversees everything from drug, vaccine and food safety to medical research and the social safety net programs Medicare and Medicaid.
“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social site announcing the appointment. Kennedy, he said, would “Make America Great and Healthy Again!”
Kennedy, a former Democrat who ran as an independent in this year’s presidential race, abandoned his bid after striking a deal to give Trump his endorsement with a promise to have a role in health policy in the administration.
He and Trump have since become good friends, with Kennedy frequently receiving loud applause at Trump’s rallies.
The expected appointment was first reported by Politico Thursday.
A longtime vaccine skeptic, Kennedy is an attorney who has built a loyal following over several decades of people who admire his lawsuits against major pesticide and pharmaceutical companies. He has pushed for tighter regulations around the ingredients in foods.
With the Trump campaign, he worked to shore up support among young mothers in particular, with his message of making food healthier in the U.S., promising to model regulations imposed in Europe. In a nod to Trump’s original campaign slogan, he named the effort “Make America Healthy Again.”
It remains unclear how that will square with Trump’s history of deregulation of big industries, including food. Trump pushed for fewer inspections of the meat industry, for example.
Kennedy’s stance on vaccines has also made him a controversial figure among Democrats and some Republicans, raising question about his ability to get confirmed, even in a GOP-controlled Senate. Kennedy has espoused misinformation around the safety of vaccines, including pushing a totally discredited theory that childhood vaccines cause autism.
He also has said he would recommend removing fluoride from drinking water. The addition of the material has been cited as leading to improved dental health.
HHS has more than 80,000 employees across the country. It houses the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Medicare and Medicaid programs and the National Institutes of Health.
Kennedy’s anti-vaccine nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, currently has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, among them The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy took leave from the group when he announced his run for president but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.
