Marjorie Taylor Greene says Capitol rioters were ‘innocent people’ set up by FBI and Democrats to make Trump fans look bad

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene continued her efforts to whitewash the truth about the 6 January attack on the US Capitol in an interview that was published on Wednesday.

Ms Greene made the comments while speaking with Darren Beatie, a former speechwriter for the Trump White House who was ousted after it was revealed that he had attended a conference frequented by white nationalists, on Mr Beatie’s show hosted on Rumble TV, a site seeking to be a conservative alternative to YouTube.

She echoed an often-repeated falsehood popular among conservatives during the interview: the assertion that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats “denied” the National Guard access to the Capitol during the riot. In reality, Capitol Police officials testified that the House and Senate security officials denied their requests for National Guard backup multiple times.

Ms Greene went on to say that the entire riot “was a complete setup across the board” that had resulted in the political optics of pitting Republican politicians against police and law enforcement.

“All those innocent people that were there in Washington DC that day, they were set up,” she charged, adding that various “agencies” such as the FBI may have been involved.

Her remarks are the latest wild, baseless assertions about the 6 January attack on the Capitol that come as the actual investigation into that day continues in the House with minimal Republican input thanks to a decision by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to pull the five Republicans who he previously chose to nominate to the panel.

Numerous Republicans have sought to downplay or outright lie about the attack on the Capitol in the months since it occurred. Rep Andrew Clyde famously compared rioters who unlawfully entered the Capitol as police were being attacked inside and outside the building to “tourists” at a congressional hearing in May.

“Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked through Statuary Hall showed people in an orderly fashion staying between the stanchions and ropes, taking videos and pictures,” he said at the time. “You know, if you didn’t know the TV footage was a video from January the 6th, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.”

The select committee is set on Wednesday to debate a contempt of Congress charge for a former Trump Justice Department official seen as key to the president’s efforts to weaponise that agency against his political opponents in 2020.

Lawmakers on the panel have subpoenaed a whole host of former President Donald Trump’s allies, advisers, and supporters involved in organising two “Stop the Steal”-themed rallies outside the White House and Congress on the day of the attack as questions remain surrounding whether the president’s inner circle was expecting or even planning for violence on the day that Congress certified Mr Trump’s election defeat.