Meadows Blames “Handful Of Fanatics” For Capitol Riot

The Guardian reports:

“No one would [focus] on the actions of … those supporters of President Trump who came [to Washington on 6 January] without hate in their hearts or any bad intentions,” he writes. “Instead, they would laser in on the actions of a handful of fanatics across town.” Throughout his book, Meadows seeks to play down Donald Trump’s role in an insurrection regarding which Meadows himself will now co-operate with the investigating House committee.

The former chief of staff writes extensively, supportively and selectively about Trump’s attempts to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden, of which the Capitol attack was the deadly culmination. But while enthusiastically repeating Trump’s lie that his defeat was the result of electoral fraud, Meadows skates over attempts to stop the certification of electoral college results, the cause in which the mob attacked the Capitol.

Read the full article.

More than 700 people have been charged with crimes related to the Capitol riot, but none yet who were at the White House.

Maybe Meadows meant to write “a handful of fanatics in the West Wing”?

More from ⁦@MartinPengelly⁩ on the Meadows opus.
https://t.co/Tiw0d12703

— Jonathan Karl (@jonkarl) December 2, 2021

Prosecutors say 1,000 police assaults were committed on Jan. 6 and more than 2,000 people breached the Capitol. Meadows is trying to minimize that — along with Trump’s own actions to stoke the unrest, per this excerpt: https://t.co/rO4Oj3a6RW

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) December 2, 2021

Trump’s last chief of staff tries the old “bad apples” excuse for the Jan. 6 insurrection https://t.co/RaxK54FP0Q

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) December 2, 2021