Republican strategist Scott Jennings and attorneys Arthur Aidala and Michael Van Der Meer touched off a heated discussion Tuesday night after bringing up the lax prosecution of Black Lives Matter rioters during a debate over President Donald Trump’s decision to pardon participants in the riot at the Capitol.
Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people convicted of crimes surrounding the storming of the Capitol building during the certification of the electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021 Monday. Aidala angered liberal panelists on “CNN NewsNight” by noting that some of those arrested in connection with the Capitol riot were held in “horrible humanitarian conditions.”
“Trump campaigned on this. This is no secret. Nobody should be surprised that this took place,” Aidala told host Abby Phillip. “Whether you like it or not, he campaigned on it openly and I will say, as a criminal defense attorney, Abby, those people who were incarcerated, they faced some horrible humanitarian conditions during their period of incarceration.”
“Jail is not nice, okay?” Phillip responded after other panelists started interjecting. “And it’s not nice for January 6th prisoners. It’s not nice for anybody else who’s there.”
WATCH:
In 2021, Republican Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Chip Roy of Texas wrote the Justice Department requesting answers about alleged mistreatment of Jan. 6 defendants.
After a further back-and-forth on the issue, “The View” co-host Ana Navarro claimed that Trump voters “screwed around” and were “finding out,” leading to Phillip asking Scott Jennings about people charged with assaulting police officers during the riots that followed the death of George Floyd in police custody in May 2020, which killed at least 24 people and caused nearly $1 billion in property damage.
“By Trump’s definition of this, and by his token, I would always also expect to see, you know, the hundreds of people who were convicted of the George Floyd protests of assaulting police officers to walk free. Right, Scott?” Phillip asked, with Jennings responding: “Well, they were prosecuted, I mean, how many were prosecuted ultimately?”
Jennings told Phillip many of those arrested during the summer 2020 riots had their charges dropped, with Phillip claiming hundreds were charged, saying she had the figures before defense attorney Michael Van Der Veen intervened.
“Well, they went into all kinds of diversionary programs,” Van Der Veen said. “I’m one of the few lawyers in this country that represented people in those riots and on January 6th, one of the very few, and the way that the prosecution was handled between those two groups are starkly different.”
Vice President Kamala Harris backed a bail fund for those involved in the riots after Floyd’s death, which also released sex offenders and people charged with domestic violence. Many of the protests where rioting broke out were backed by Black Lives Matter, which has come under scrutiny over the lavish lifestyles of the group’s leaders.
Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors handed hundreds of thousands of dollars to her child’s father and her brother, according to documents. She also purchased a $6 million mansion in the Los Angeles area using donor funds.
“Don’t you think that there is a substantive difference between what happened on January 6th, what they were trying to do, and why the federal government has a desire, and in fact, a necessity to prevent that from ever happening again?” Phillip responded. “Don’t you think there’s a substantive difference between those two things? One of them was trying to overturn an election.”
Jennings stepped in to answer, prompting Phillip to turn her attention to him.
“You don’t think there’s a difference between trying to overturn an election and violent social justice protests?” Phillip asked Jennings, who responded, “Well, you call it social justice.”
“I think both groups of people were mad about something going on. They wanted to change it. They took matters into their own hands, that they should not have done,” Jennings added after a back-and-forth with Phillip. “In both cases, you had people engaging in activities that they should not have engaged in. Now, our culture, our public discourse decided that one group of people, social justice, is good, and these people were bad. But the reality is they had the same motivation.”
Former Biden campaign aide Ashley Allison then jumped in.
“I don’t even want to get in this debate because it’s done. People voted, and as Ana said, FAFO, okay, go, go Google it if you don‘t know what that means, because I can’t say it on national television,” Allison said. “But this is the era that we are in and people there were people in protest. They were not riots, they were protests, and there were people who showed up at the protest and did bad behavior. But that was because a man was murdered unjustly.”
“That doesn’t give you the right to break into the Nike store!” Aidala responded. “That doesn’t give you the right to break into Tiffany’s!”
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