Trump Absurdly Compares Jan. 6 Rioters to Colbert’s Staff Arrested at Capitol After DOJ Drops Charges

Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump slammed the decision by federal prosecutors to drop charges against a crew of staffers of Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show who were arrested while filming a segment in the Capitol complex after hours last month.

“Wow! Prosecutors have just dropped all charges against ratings challenged Colbert Show staffers, who entered the Capitol illegally, disregarded police warnings, wouldn’t leave the premises, and were very loud and disruptive late into the evening, with no security present as is mandated by law. These Radical Left lunatics, from a failing show, were treated so differently than the Unselects are treating so many of our great American Patriots,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Tuesday.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia dropped the charges against the crew, which included Robert Smigel, who voices Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, saying in a statement that the staffers were brought into the building by House staff but were unaccompanied at the time of their arrest.

“We do not believe it is probable that the Office would be able to obtain and sustain convictions on these charges,” the office said.

Trump and Fox News host Jesse Watters have absurdly compared what Colbert’s crew did to Jan. 6 in a thinly veiled attempt to defend what happened that day.

Trump has no credibility to be outraged about people being in the Capitol complex illegally considering that a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 in an attack on U.S. democracy that turned deadly.

Despite Trump’s statement, the rioters were anything but “Patriots,” and the president let the riot rage for hours without taking any action to stop it.

Colbert’s staff, meanwhile, were on the premises to conduct interviews and, being abandoned by two congressional staffers, were doing some final filming in a hallway in the Longworth House Office Building when they were arrested.

“The individuals, who entered the building on two separate occasions, were invited by Congressional staffers to enter the building in each instance and were never asked to leave by the staffers who invited them, though, members of the group had been told at various points by the U.S. Capitol Police that they were supposed to have an escort,” said the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia in a statement.

Watters has been dismissive of the outrage over Jan. 6, yet during his show on Monday expressed disgust over prosecutors declining the charge the Late Show staffers he called “The Colbert Nine,” and “a group of Democrat insurrectionists” he falsely accused of “breaching the Capitol.” While the Colbert crew was not supposed to be in the building unaccompanied, what they did was clearly not an insurrection.

It should go without saying that the infraction committed by Colbert’s crew does not even come close to what Trump’s mob did on Jan. 6. One might only believe otherwise if they bought into the utterly false narrative that the Jan. 6 rioters were merely tourists taking a stroll through the Capitol.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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