‘Absolutely’: Republican Rep. Andy Barr says Jan. 6 prisoners should be released

The utterance came during the closing seconds of a cable news interview, with a nudge from a partisan anchor.

The hundreds of convicts serving time for criminal activity in the riot of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 should “absolutely” be released from their jail terms, Congressman Andy Barr said, agreeing with the assertion of Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo.

Bartiromo, a fervent Donald Trump ally who regularly amplifies false claims about the 2020 presidential election being stolen, told the Kentucky she’d like to “see some movement with these people getting out of jail.”

“It’s just wrong that all these people have been locked up,” Bartiromo said incredulously. “Now with all of this new information, this is just wrong.”

“Absolutely Maria,” Barr replied without elaborating.

A spokesman for Barr’s office did not respond to an inquiry Thursday seeking clarity on his remark.

The predicate for Bartiromo’s revisiting Jan. 6, 2021, was the revelation of new video by a House GOP committee of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the back of a vehicle expressing frustration about the lack of National Guard troops at the U.S. Capitol that day.

“They clearly didn’t know,” Pelosi said. “And I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for more.”

Those on the right have deemed the video explosive, attempting to pin Pelosi with the blame for the unprecedented breach on the capitol building.

Barr said it underscored how intelligence officials informed Pelosi that additional security services would be necessary beyond Capitol police.

“They knew that there was going to be trouble and they did nothing,” Barr alleged, painting the Democratic Party-led investigation of Jan. 6 “a total fraud.”

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A U.S. Senate report noted that that law enforcement officials downplayed or ignored a “massive amount of intelligence information” forecasting the possibility of violence or an attack on the day marked to certify the 2020 election results.

In his memoir, Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah wrote that he had texted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell citing a Pentagon official warning him of “very disturbing social media traffic” regarding the planned protests on Jan. 6.

“There are calls to burn down your home, Mitch; to smuggle guns into DC and to storm the Capitol,” Romney wrote the Senate GOP leader. “I hope that sufficient security plans are in place.”

McConnell never responded to Romney’s pleading.

Deeming it a “tragic day,” Barr went as far to assert to Bartiromo the attack could have been prevented if Pelosi had called up the National Guard.

Yet unmentioned during the Barr-Bartiromo interview is the Jan. 6 rally headlined by Trump and his prodding of attendees to march to the U.S. Capitol and “fight like hell” and “show strength.”

Trump now says one of his first acts in office if he’s re-elected would be to “free the Jan. 6 hostages being wrongly imprisoned.”

According to the Justice Department, more than 450 Americans have been sentenced to periods of incarceration for criminal activity on Jan. 6.

About two-dozen Kentuckians have been arrested in relation to the attack on the Capitol, including several Lexington residents.

A vast majority of Americans — 78% — disapprove of the actions of those who forced their way into the U.S. Capitol, according to a January CBS News poll.

More than 7 in 10 Americans — including a majority of Republicans — said the penalties for Jan. 6 have been “fair” or “not harsh enough,” according to a Washington Post survey earlier this year. Forty-two percent of Republicans assessed the penalties as “too harsh.”

In January of this year, the governing body of the Republican Party of Kentucky passed a resolution claiming many people charged with crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol have “been wrongfully held.”

The resolution was identical to one filed by State Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield, in the Kentucky Senate a day earlier. Tichenor’s resolution did not advance.