Former President Donald Trump, his former adviser Steve Bannon, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) each offered words of support for Jan. 6 defendants at a Dec. 1 Patriot Freedom Project
event in Washington.
Patriot Freedom Project is a nonprofit organization that aims to support those imprisoned for breaching the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as well as their family members and friends.
The event, a holiday open house, was cohosted by the Personnel Policy Operations and the Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations at the Hilton Capitol Hill Hotel in Washington.
“Patriot freedom is what it’s about, and that’s not happening in our country,” the 45th president remarked in a pre-recorded video shared with attendees. “What they’ve done to torment people and go after people like never before—I don’t think anything like this has ever happened in our country before, and certainly not to this extent.”
Describing the government’s treatment of the Jan. 6 defendants as a “very unfair situation,” Trump added that he and his team would be “looking about it and talking about it very, very strongly” as part of his 2024 presidential campaign.
Greene, who attended the event in person, recounted her experience in November 2021
touring the jail where Jan. 6 defendants were being held.
“I was appalled at much of it,” Greene noted, adding that she would not have been permitted to see the area of the
jail where the Jan. 6 prisoners were being kept if she hadn’t “pitched a fit.”
Stating that she would “never forget” what she had witnessed, Greene described the
defendants as “broken souls that looked like they thought everybody had given up on them, and they’d probably given up on themself.”
“Many of them are
denied medical treatment,” she noted. “One of the men had a finger that was turned sideways from an injury that he had received on Jan. 6 and they refused to fix his finger. Another man was being refused to have treatment for Celiac disease. Another man, an elderly guy, his whole arm was purple, and they were refusing treatment for him.”
Conditions, she added, were worse for the unvaccinated inmates.
“It’s bad enough in the jail if you’re a pre-trial Jan. 6 defendant,” she said. “But if you’re an unvaccinated pre-trial Jan. 6 defendant, you’re on a whole new level. … You’re denied many things that are just basic
human rights.”
The Epoch Times has reached out to the Department of Justice for comment.
Greene also noted that, at 9 p.m. every night, the inmates salute the American flag—drawn on a piece of paper—and sing the National Anthem “with more passion and more devotion and … more patriotism than anyone I’ve ever seen or heard sing the National Anthem.”
Bannon, who was recently
sentenced to four months in prison for defying a subpoena from the House Jan. 6 committee, spoke at the event via video conference, thanking the family members of the Jan. 6 defendants for their courage.
“The example you’ve set of how you’ve comported yourselves over the last two years since the incident, I think, is a shining example of the grittiness and toughness and steely resolve of the American people.”
Adding that he believed things would change “pretty dramatically” with the support of Trump and a Republican-controlled House, Bannon signed off with a few words of solidarity.
“You guys know I’ve always got your back,” he said. “The War Room, and particularly, the vast audience of the War Room, is always there for you guys,” he added, referring to his podcast.
