Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Claims Fundraising Email Which Called The Jan. 6 Defendants ‘Activists’ Was An ‘Error’

The campaign of independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that a fundraising email labeling the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot defendants as “activists” was a mistake.

These emails, which were sent to Kennedy’s supporters last week, called WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange a “political prisoner” and suggested that he and Capitol rioters were victims of an “outrageous miscarriage of justice.”

“Rarely do opposites attract, especially in Washington,” the email stated. “Yet regarding the case of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who is facing extradition to the U.S., both hard-right Marjorie Taylor Greene and hard-left Ilhan Omar Agree: We Must Free Assange Now!”

“The Brits want to make sure our government doesn’t kill Assange,” the letter claimed. “This is the reality that every American Citizen faces – from [Edward] Snowden to Julian Assange to the J6 activists sitting in a Washington D.C. jail cell stripped of their Constitutional liberties.”

Kennedy campaign spokesperson Stephanie Spear claimed that the language used in this email was an error.

“That statement was an error that does not reflect Mr. Kennedy’s views,” Spear’s statement said. “It was inserted by a new marketing contractor and slipped through the normal approval process.”

In an updated statement, the Kennedy campaign spokeswoman stated that the “campaign has terminated its contract with this vendor.”

During an interview with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto, Kennedy said that he would not speak about possibly pardoning the January 6 rioters unless he won the general election. 

He refused to elaborate on his approach to the rioters, stating he would consider each case individually, but he mentioned that he would pardon Snowden, Assange and the dark web marketplace creator Ross Ulbricht.

“I would pardon people,” he declared. “I intend to use the pardon power, and I intend to use it very quickly in office. I’m going to pardon Julian Assange. I’m going to pardon Edward Snowden.”

“I may pardon Ross Ulbricht if I find that his prosecution was, that his sentence, his very lengthy sentence, was the result of making an example of him in order to punish Bitcoin and cryptocurrency,” the independent candidate added.

On March 16, former president Donald Trump called the rioters “hostages” during the introduction of his Dayton, Ohio, campaign rally. 

The next day, Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, criticized the former president on Face The Nation for having saluted the convicted defendants and for using the word “hostage” to describe them.

In early April, Kennedy claimed to CNN news anchor Erin Burnet that President Joe Biden was a more significant threat to democracy than Trump.

He called out the Biden administration for working with social media companies to restrict the spreading of Covid-19 misinformation. Instagram temporarily banned the independent candidate for spreading false claims about the Covid-19 vaccine claims in 2021.