In the 44 months since the Jan. 6 attack, prosecutors have charged more than 1,500 people with crimes related to the Capitol assault. Most of them are relatively anonymous figures that most Americans couldn’t identify or pick out of a lineup.
There are, however, some exceptions.
For those who’ve followed the story, there are probably a handful of Jan. 6 criminals and defendants whose faces stand out in memorable ways. There was the guy with his feet on Nancy Pelosi’s desk, for example, and the guy wearing horns on his head. And, of course, who can forget the guy with the Hitler mustache?
When Timothy Hale-Cusanelli was indicted by the Justice Department, federal law enforcement described the Jan. 6 rioter as a “white supremacist and Nazi sympathizer,” who told his co-workers that “Hitler should have finished the job” and “babies born with any deformities or disabilities should be shot in the forehead.”
The year after the insurrectionist violence, Hale-Cusanelli went on trial for his role in the Jan. 6 riot, and as part of his defense, he tried to convince a jury that he didn’t know the Capitol building is where Congress meets. For some reason, that didn’t work, and the Nazi sympathizer was convicted on five counts, including one felony.
Two years later, Hale-Cusanelli’s name is back in the news for an unexpected reason. NPR reported:
Twice this past summer, Donald Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J. has featured speeches from a rioter convicted of participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, who has a well-documented history of extreme antisemitic and racist rants. One of those events — a fundraiser for a controversial nonprofit group that supports Capitol riot defendants — was personally endorsed by Trump himself in a video message that was played for the room.
“All of the people there, you’re amazing patriots,” the former president said in the video. “Have a great time at Bedminster.”
NPR’s report has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News.
To be sure, the fact that Trump and his venues have hosted events for Jan. 6 criminals and defendants is not altogether new. NBC News reported in June 2023, for example, that the former president spoke at a Jan. 6 fundraiser, held at his private golf club in Bedminster. “I’m going to make a contribution,” the Republican said at the time.
Two months later, NBC News ran a separate report, noting that Trump participated in a different Jan. 6 fundraiser, which was also held at his golf club in New Jersey.
Both events were organized by Patriot Freedom Project — the same group that hosted a Bedminster event three months ago where Hale-Cusanelli spoke.
The Trump campaign didn’t deny any of this, though it told NPR that the Republican candidate — the one who recorded an on-camera video statement celebrating attendees as “amazing patriots” — was not “made aware of the comments that [Hale-Cusanelli’s] made.”
I don’t imagine we’ve heard the last of this one, especially given the larger context.
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