In a shocking interview with CNN on Tuesday, an attorney for one of the Capitol Hill protestors on Jan 6 alleged that his client and others have been severely tortured “five miles from the White House.”
Joseph McBride was asked for his thoughts on Paul Hodgkins’ eight-month prison term handed down this week for stepping into the office and sitting at Nancy Pelosi’s desk.
McBride, who represents another of Jan. 6 protestors told CNN host John Avlon that “there are people who showed up to attack the Capitol, there are people who showed up to protest, and there are people who showed up to protest that got involved with the greater events of that day. And it is very important not to lump everybody in, not to define every protester that showed up that day as an insurrectionist — which, by the way, no one has been charged with.”
Then Avlon laughed at McBride and snootily inquired about a parallel he made between the suspects’ detention circumstances and Nazi gulags.
McBride declared that “People are being tortured. Tortured!” asking Avlon “Are you OK with people being tortured five miles from the White House?”
Avlon responded by saying that the claim was “an extraordinary statement that would seem to be utterly un-based in fact.”
McBride shot back yelling “Torture is never OK! TORTURE! TORTURE! TORTURE! TORTURE! TORTURE!” prompting Avlon to end the interview
“Keep yelling torture. We’ll stick with the facts,” he said.
“The facts are torture!” the attorney yelled back.
Watch:
It isn’t the first time that the claims of torture have arisen in regards to the Capitol ‘rioters’ who have been held for months without trial.
The inmates and some of their lawyers have alleged that they are being held in solitary confinement and have been subject to beatings, threats and verbal abuse by guards.
One attorney described his client Ryan Samsel’s face as looking “like a tomato that was stomped on,” after a beating by correctional officers that left him “blind in one eye, [with] a skull fracture and detached retina.”
Inmate Ronald Sandlin has also alleged that minority guards are targeting the mostly white inmates with racial abuse, specifically noting that one guard shouted “I hate all white people and your honky religion.”
