The campaign of independent presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. sent a fundraising email on Thursday referring to Jan. 6 Capitol rioters as “activists” who have been “stripped of their Constitutional liberties.”
In the email to supporters, Kennedy referred to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as a “political prisoner” and urged his supporters to sign a petition calling for his release.
He then compared jailed Capitol rioters to Assange and Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who leaked highly classified national secrets, and is living in exile in Russia.
“The Brits want to make sure our government doesn’t kill Assange. This is the reality that every American Citizen faces — from Ed Snowden, to Julian Assange to the J6 activists sitting in a Washington DC jail cell stripped of their Constitutional liberties,” the email said. “Please help our campaign call out the illiberal actions of our very own government.”
A British court delayed Assange’s extraction to the United States last month, where he faces espionage charges for one of the biggest national security leaks in American history. The judges gave the U.S. government three weeks to send assurances that Assange would get a fair trial and that he would not receive the death penalty if convicted.
In an email to NBC News, Kennedy’s campaign spokesperson Stephanie Spear said the statement was an “error.”
“That statement was an error that does not reflect Mr. Kennedy’s views. It was inserted by a new marketing contractor and slipped through the normal approval process,” she said.
The “campaign has terminated its contract with this vendor,” Spear added.
But, as Kennedy tries to distance himself from his comments, the DNC says the email is the latest example of how he is aligned with Trump who has called Jan. 6 rioters “hostages.”
“There’s one big problem here for RFK Jr. as he tries to disown his campaign’s embrace of January 6th insurrectionists — it captures his views perfectly,” DNC spokesperson Matt Corridoni said.
