Joy Reid

Just so that people can be reminded.

I'm gonna act, I'm really gonna be grandma right now.

And I'm gonna take out my first amendment and read it to you.

It says,

shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for redress of grievances therefore nothing that was happening inside that church was a crime if they want to try to come up with a crime for protesting

If the folks who own the church want to charge trespass or something like that, you can litigate that.

But the reality is the protests were constitutionally sound.

The journalism was constitutionally sound.

And the only reason that Pam Bondi's Department of Injustice has decided to try to prosecute you is probably because Donald Trump told her to.

And we no longer have a Justice Department because Pamela Joe, Pam Bondi, has decided that her job is not to pursue justice without fear or favor.

Her job is to do whatever it is Donald Trump is telling her to do in the moment.

And whoever annoys Donald Trump or makes him angry or makes him sad or doesn't kiss his ass, she prosecutes them or attempts to prosecute them, to punish them for doing things he doesn't like.

testimony before a congressional committee.

And I watched Republicans attempt to spin the attack on the Capitol on January 6, January 6, 2021, as First Amendment protected free speech.

So what we're now saying is that hearing is that conservatives believe

that physically attacking the Capitol, hitting police officers like Michael Fanone with stun guns, bear spray, and baseball bats, defecating in the Capitol, smashing the windows of the Capitol, literally destroying the Capitol's edifice, that doing that is First Amendment protected free speech, slamming those officers in doorways,

beating them with their fists, nearly killing Mike Fanone, nearly killing other officers, injuring 140 police officers and leaving six people dead, that is protected free speech.

but a protest in a church at which no one is harmed or killed and covering that protest as a journalist, that's a crime.

We are in Putin Navalny territory.

This is the way Russia operates.