Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is an independent candidate for president, mistakenly referred to the people who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as “activists” in a fundraising email sent on Thursday, but his team later clarified that it was an error.
The emails, which were sent to his supporters on Thursday, claimed that Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, is a “political prisoner” and implied that both he and the Jan. 6 rioters are victims of an “outrageous miscarriage of justice.”
“It’s rare to see opposites agree, especially in Washington. However, in the case of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks who faces extradition to the US, both the hard-right Marjorie Taylor Green and the hard-left Ilhan Omar are in agreement: We Must Free Assange Now!” the email stated.
“The British government wants to ensure that our government doesn’t harm Assange. This is the reality facing every American citizen – from Ed Snowden, to Julian Assange, to the J6 activists who are currently in a Washington DC jail cell stripped of their Constitutional rights,” it stated.
Stephanie Spear, the spokesperson for Kennedy's campaign, stated in a message obtained by The Hill that the language used in the email was a mistake.
“That statement was an error and does not represent Mr. Kennedy’s views,” Spear’s statement said, as first reported by NBC News. “It was included by a new marketing contractor and slipped through the usual approval process.”
In an updated statement, Spear mentioned that the “campaign has terminated its contract with this vendor.”
NBC News reported that only 15 of the Jan. 6 defendants are currently in pretrial detention. Most of them have been accused of violence against law enforcement officials during the attack on the Capitol. During an interview last month,
In Kennedy mentioned that he won’t discuss possibly pardoning the rioters until he wins the general election. He indicated that he would handle it on a case-by-case basis, but confirmed that he would pardon American intelligence contractor Edward Snowden and Assange.“I would grant pardons,” Kennedy informed Fox News’s Neil Cavuto in March. “I plan to use the pardon power, and I intend to use it very quickly once in office.”
Kennedy’s website
expressed the need to advocate for Assange and stated that on his first day in office, he would pardon Assange. The candidate mentioned that he will issue an executive order to “put an end to all efforts by federal agents and agencies to censor the political speech of Americans.” According to the Department of Justice, over 1,300 individuals have been charged in connection with the Capitol riot, and at least 400 have been charged with assaulting law enforcement officers.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent candidate running for president, mistakenly referred to the people who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as “activists” in a fundraising email sent on Thursday, but his team later clarified that it was an error. The emails, which were sent to his supporters on Thursday, claimed that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a “political prisoner”…
