On Friday’s edition of NBC’s “Meet the Press Now,” NBC News Senior Justice Reporter Ryan Reilly said that “because of the conspiracy theories”, the pipe bomber case is “the one investigation” surrounding January 6 “that really moved forward during the Trump administration.”
Reilly said that he thinks the suspect’s defense team will argue that the Trump pardon of January 6 defendants applies to him, but he’s not sure if the courts will buy that argument.
He added, “[T]he language of the pardon itself mostly spoke to charges that were looming at that moment. And, since that point, it’s essentially been prosecutorial discretion, them deciding not to charge hundreds of other people they could have charged who were never charged — including people who viciously assaulted law enforcement officers, I should say — with any crimes since Donald Trump took back office. That’s — they shut down the Capitol siege unit, they fired a bunch of prosecutors, they demoted a bunch of prosecutors, they weren’t going along with this. But this is — because of the conspiracy theories surrounding this, this is the one investigation that really moved forward during the Trump administration.”
Reilly further stated, “[Y]ou have two officials at the top of the FBI who spread conspiracy theories about the pipe bombing itself.”
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