Trump Pick for Jobs Data Chief Was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, White House Says He ‘Was in Town for Meetings’
Parler via ProPublica
President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a video archived by ProPublica shows.
This week, Trump tapped economist EJ Antoni, a research fellow at the MAGA-fied Heritage Foundation think tank, to lead the agency responsible for publishing vital employment data. Antoni alarmed many in Washington and on Wall Street when he said he would not release new jobs reports until the data is “corrected.” He later walked that back.
According to a report published by NBC News on Wednesday, Antoni “appears in numerous videos posted on social media of the crowd on the Capitol grounds” on Jan. 6, 2021. The ensuing infamous riot had not yet occurred.
The report was based on a video – archived by ProPublica – that was posted on the right-wing social media site Parler.
“At that time, police were struggling to hold off the mob from taking over the inauguration platform. The crowd had surrounded the building but not yet entered the Capitol,” NBC News stated. “Other footage shows Antoni on the east side of the Capitol building, walking south, away from the building.”
A spokesperson for the White House told NBC News that Antoni was simply a “bystander.”
“These pictures show EJ Antoni, a bystander to the events of January 6th, observing and then leaving the Capitol area,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement. “EJ was in town for meetings, and it is wrong and defamatory to suggest EJ engaged in anything inappropriate or illegal.”
On Aug. 1, the president fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer after an underwhelming July jobs report and downward revisions in employment growth from May and June. Trump baselessly alleged she had “faked the jobs numbers.” He nominated Antoni the following week. His nomination is pending Senate confirmation.
On the first day of his second term, Trump pardoned nearly all Jan. 6 defendants, or about 1,500 people. The riot was the culmination of Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election.
