Former Attorney General Bill Barr said Friday that the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol building was “a clown show” and posed no threat to democracy.
“I thought Jan. 6 was a clown show,” Barr said during an event at the City Club of Cleveland about his book, “Another Damn Thing,” that aired on CSPAN Friday. “Anyone that thinks the republic was in serious danger on Jan. 6 is out of touch. You had a control room with Rudy Giuliani and Bannon and those people. The country could not have been safer.”
“This was a keystone operation that played into the hands of their adversaries,” Barr added.
Hundreds of people stormed the Capitol building during the certification of the electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021. A Capitol Police officer shot and killed one of those who stormed the building.
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A federal jury in Washington, D.C., convicted four members of the Proud Boys, including former leader Enrique Tarrio, on multiple charges, including seditious conspiracy, Thursday.
Barr dismissed the notion that democracy was under threat from conservatives, despite the riot at the Capitol building.
“The threat to American democracy is not authoritarian black shirts on the right. It is not that kind of threat,” Barr said when questioned by Daniel Moulthrop, CEO of the City Club of Cleveland. “The threat of totalitarianism is as Tocqueville wrote in the 1830s, it is more the progressive totalitarian.”
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