A top-ranking member of the Democratic Party has issued a stark warning about Donald Trump’s decisions to pardon more than 1,500 participants in the Jan. 6 riots and to purge the FBI of agents who investigated the insurrection.
Speaking with MSNBC’s Ayman on Saturday evening, California Representative Robert Garcia told host Ayman Mohyeldin that Trump’s day one pardons, coupled with a slate of blanket firings at the Department of Jusice, effectively amounted to “building himself a private army” by signaling to violent groups across the country his willingness “to protect them” if they “do whatever it is that Donald Trump says.”
As Mohyeldin put it to Garcia, “Almost every single field office in this country had an active case or was participating in that investigation [into the Capitol Riots]. But to the second point, if these employees are in fact fired, what danger does that pose for our national security in the immediate short term?”
Garcia then shot back, “A huge danger. Ayman, I think you know this, we had a group of militia, of insurrectionists trying to overthrow the government. Let’s not forget what actually happened. They attacked our United States Capitol. They attacked police officers. They tried to change an election that was won fair and square. And they were sent to do so by Donald Trump.”
He added, “Now, he wants to essentially silence and punish anyone that was involved in holding these people accountable. And I think the other piece of this that people aren’t talking about is what Donald Trump is also doing, is he is signalling to all of these folks across the country–very dangerous people, by the way–that he is going to protect them.”
Garcia went on, “He is building himself a private army and militia of people across the country that are willing to do whatever it is that Donald Trump says. And I think we’ve got to take this very seriously and know that what he is doing is damaging our national security infrastructure while building his own and supporting those militia, those white nationalist groups that are supporting him across the country.”
