MEZIESBLOG

In comments to reporters on Thursday after the conclusion of the Supreme Court hearing, former President Donald Trump claimed that “there were no guns, there were no anything” at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. 

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. People who illegally entered Capitol grounds during the January 6 riot were armed with guns and a wide variety of other weapons, including stun guns, knives, batons, baseball bats and chemical sprays. The Justice Department said in an official update in January 2024 that 116 of the people who have been charged in connection to the riot “have been charged with entering a restricted area with a dangerous or deadly weapon.”

We may never get a complete inventory of the concealed weapons the rioters possessed on January 6, since nearly all of the rioters were able to leave the Capitol without being detained and searched, so it is possible that most rioters were unarmed. But it was always apparent from video footage that there were a variety of unconcealed weapons in the crowd that day — and it has been proven in court that at least some of the people who illegally entered Capitol grounds on January 6 were armed with guns.

In its 2023 ruling disqualifying Trump from the Colorado ballot under the Constitution’s ban on insurrectionists holding office, the Colorado Supreme Court wrote: “Contrary to President Trump’s assertion that no evidence in the record showed that the mob was armed with deadly weapons or that it attacked law enforcement officers in a manner consistent with a violent insurrection, the district court found — and millions of people saw on live television, recordings of which were introduced into evidence in this case — that the mob was armed with a wide array of weapons.”