A federal judge took a shot at the Republican National Committee, saying the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was not “legitimate political discourse.”
D.C. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s remarks Thursday came as she sentenced Mark Leffingwell to six months in prison for punching two officers during the riot.
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“It is not ‘legitimate political discourse,’ and it is not justified to descend on the nation’s Capitol at the direction of a disappointed candidate and disrupt the electoral process,” Jackson said. “Canceling out the votes of other people with a show force is the opposite of what America stands for.”
The RNC received criticism for its vote to censure Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. The censure resolution condemned the two lawmakers for participating in the House select committee investigating the riot. At one point, the resolution said, “Cheney and Kinzinger are participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
Critics argued that the language suggested the RNC considered the Jan. 6 riot, which disrupted lawmakers certifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, “legitimate political discourse.” In response to the backlash, Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel wrote an op-ed arguing that the media “distorted” the RNC’s words. She said the riot itself was not legitimate discourse but that the Jan. 6 committee has potentially been “ruining innocent people’s lives.”
“The January 6 Committee predictably has now vastly exceeded its original purpose and morphed into something else entirely, investigating Republicans who had nothing to do with January 6 for the apparent offense of being Republican. Under the Committee’s approach, almost anything related to the 2020 election is within the scope of its jurisdiction, to include harassing citizens who were not even in Washington, DC that day,” she said.
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Leffingwell suffered a traumatic brain injury while serving in Iraq and pleaded guilty in October to charges of assaulting, resisting, or impeding an officer. In addition to six months in prison, he received a $2,000 penalty, 200 hours of community service, and two years of probation.
Video showed Leffingwell inside the Capitol on Jan. 6. He was arrested later that day after punching two officers, according to court records. Jackson took note of his injury but argued others needed to be deterred from taking similar action in the future.
