Donald Trump downplayed his role in the siege of the US Capitol on the third anniversary of the attack, arguing that those prosecuted for storming the building should be freed.
Speaking at a campaign event in Clinton, Iowa with the first Republican nominating contest little more than a week away, Trump called those jailed in the wake of the Jan 6, 2021 attack “hostages” and said they had been mistreated by the Biden administration.
“They’ve suffered enough,” Trump said. “I call them hostages. Some people call them prisoners.”
Speaking to more than a thousand supporters in a school gymnasium, Trump repeated his unfounded claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent and cast himself as a victim of political persecution.
“I got indicted because I challenged the crooked election,” Trump told the crowd.
Trump himself has suggested during previous campaign stops that undercover FBI agents played a significant role in instigating the attack, an account not supported by official investigations
More than 1,200 people have been charged with taking part in the riot, and more than 900 have either pleaded guilty or been convicted following a trial.
“It wasn’t an insurrection,” said Hale Wilson, a Trump supporter from Des Moines who attended a campaign event in Newton, Iowa earlier in the day. “There were bad actors involved that got the crowd going.”
At the Clinton event, Erin George, a local county commissioner, said the prison sentences handed down to the rioters “were 100 percent unwarranted.”
Trump was in Iowa to curry support ahead of the state’s Republican caucus on Jan 15, which is the first contest of the Republican presidential nominating contest. He currently leads all competitors by more than 30 percentage points in the state, according to most polls.
