Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. backed away Thursday from a fundraising email that referred to the Jan. 6 rioters as “activists.”
The email from “Team Kennedy” praised a British court for checking a weaponized U.S. criminal-justice system by conditioning an American extradition request against Julian Assange.
“The Brits want to make sure our government doesn’t kill Assange,” the email says. “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 campaign claimed Thursday, according to a report in The Washington Post, that the wording was an “error that does not reflect Mr. Kennedy’s views.”
The statement “was inserted by a new marketing contractor and slipped through the normal approval process,” campaign spokeswoman Stefanie Spear said.
Referring to the Jan. 6 prisoners that way, the Post noted, leans toward former President Donald Trump’s description of them as “patriots” and “hostages.”
Mr. Trump has said he likely will pardon the Jan. 6 rioters should he become president, while Mr. Kennedy has said merely that he would do so only if prosecutorial misconduct were proven.