GOP reps invite J6 rioter who stormed Capitol with knife and tactical vest to inauguration

11 December 2024

One participant in the January 6, 2021 siege of the U.S. Capitol is now getting a warm, official welcome back to the building he ransacked by several sitting members of Congress.

Politico legal correspondent Kyle Cheney reported Wednesday that Russell Taylor — who invited "fighters" to help him storm the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election — will be attending President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration on January 20, 2025. Former Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) wrote a letter to U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth saying that "three current members of the Utah congressional delegation" were co-signing his invitation of Taylor to the inauguration, given that the terms of Taylor's probation ban him from traveling to Washington, D.C. without an invitation. He did not mention which three of Utah's six representatives were in support of Taylor's attendance.

“He is [a] caring father and reveres his family, his faith, and his love of our Country as his highest priority in life,” Stewart wrote. “I am honored to extend this invitation for him to attend the Inauguration as my guest.”

Some of the "fighters" Taylor asked to help assault the Capitol were "Three Percenter" militia members. The Southern Poverty Law Center has deemed Three Percenters as an "antigovernment general militia movement" whose leaders have specifically targeted Muslims and immigrants. Cheney wrote that on January 6, Taylor "surged to the U.S. Capitol with a knife and a tactical vest." And the day before, he delivered a speech threatening violence unless the election was overturned in Trump's favor.

"In these streets, we will fight and we will bleed before we allow our freedom to be taken from us," Taylor said according to court documents. "We will not return to our peaceful way of life until this election is made right."

Trump has promised that he would pardon scores of January 6 participants shortly after taking the oath of office next month. Some defendants have cited Trump's promise of pardons to argue that their proceedings should be delayed until after the inauguration, given that a presidential pardon would negate their prosecutions by President Joe Biden's Department of Justice.

According to Cheney, members of the U.S. Capitol Police Department will be tasked with protecting Taylor during his impending visit to Washington. This makes it a historic first that someone who participated in a deadly attack on the Capitol — that led to the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick and the injuries of 174 other Capitol police officers — will be protected by that same department. Former Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn called it a "slap in the face" for Trump to consider pardoning people who attacked police.

In a 2023 post to her Substack newsletter, journalist Sarah Kendzior presciently warned that Biden's presidency would be a mere "placeholder" between "aspiring American autocracy" and a more "entrenched" form of authoritarianism if he failed to thoroughly prosecute both the participants and architects of the 2021 insurrection.

"Under Biden, the United States became the first country to face an attempted coup and not only fail to punish the coup plotters but allow them to hold office and make laws," she wrote. "There is no parallel in world history. Even Hitler had a prison interlude between his putsch and his presidency."

Click here to read Cheney's full report in Politico.

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