As Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) continues to focus on prosecuting individuals involved in the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol, lawmakers and experts say the administration and the Democratic Party have embellished the facts of what occurred, misallocated federal resources, unjustly prosecuted nonviolent protestors, and weaponized the incident for political gain.

On Monday, the fourth anniversary of the riot, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a statement claiming in part that “five officers … lost their lives in the line of duty as a result of what happened to them on January 6, 2021.” But as noted by National Review’s Andrew McCarthy, “no police officers died in the line of duty during the Capitol riot.” As he went on to write, some of the officers involved in protecting the Capitol tragically passed away after the incident as a result of medical complications and suicides, but “[n]ot a single charge of murder of a federal officer, nor conspiracy or attempt to murder a federal officer, was alleged by DOJ” related to January 6 (J6).

Despite this, Garland’s DOJ has filed charges against almost 1,600 individuals in connection with J6, with reports on Monday indicating that as many as 200 more individuals may be charged as well. As Garland acknowledged in his statement, “Over the past four years, our prosecutors, FBI agents, investigators, and analysts have conducted one of the most complex, and most resource-intensive investigations in the Justice Department’s history.”

But Republican lawmakers argue that much of the narrative surrounding J6 has been distorted to paint anyone who was present at the Capitol that day as a violent “insurrectionist” and blame President Donald Trump for instigating the violence. On Monday, Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) joined “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” to discuss an interim report released by the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight regarding J6.

“[Garland] certainly, I think, overdid it” with regard to the number of individuals charged, Griffith contended. “That’s not to say there weren’t bad actors on January 6th,” he added. “There were some, but the vast majority of folks were there to protest, but they were planning on a peaceful protest. And then, you know, everything broke loose and got out of control, but it is amazing how they don’t want to tell the whole narrative. And you know, what we need to do is tell the whole truth, right? [The] good, the bad, the ugly on both sides of this thing.”

Griffith went on to point out that Trump attempted to contain the chaos on that day with the National Guard.

“[O]ne of the biggest things that has struck me from our investigation is the fact that President Trump authorized the National Guard to come in,” he emphasized. “[But] it was the D.C. politicos … Nancy Pelosi and company who — and I can’t say that she made the decision herself — but they didn’t want to have this image of the National Guard coming in. They had bicycle racks up for a perimeter, knowing that there were going to be tens of thousands, if not more than 100,000 people in Washington that day to protest. Today, for example, they’ve been putting up for about a week … these huge fences that kept people from getting anywhere near the Capitol. None of that was done in advance [of J6].”

“Our law enforcement was not prepared,” Griffith continued. “Nobody in D.C. was prepared. And then the people who could have ameliorated this issue were left sitting on the sidelines. The National Guard was told just to sit by and wait for orders. And then even after the military folks gave the orders at the highest level, a general decided he wasn’t going to issue that order right away and held on for another couple of hours before sending in the National Guard. So we need to look at all the totality of the circumstances and look at each individual case if we’re really going to make a decision as to whether or not these people had evil in their hearts on that day. I would submit a lot of them did not.”

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins concurred, observing that officials took extra precautions with barricades in D.C. following the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots, but curiously did not implement the same security measures ahead of J6. “When you add those facts and these perceptions with what happened post January 6th with the sham investigation that took place by Nancy Pelosi and the January 6th committee, it only fuels that idea that this was politically motivated to advance a narrative.”

“I don’t think there’s any question,” Griffith agreed. “The January 6th select committee that Nancy Pelosi put together was politically motivated. I think the evidence is clear on that from the very beginning, from day one. They wanted to project that this was all Donald Trump’s fault, that he was the big bad guy, and the evidence just didn’t bear that out.”

The congressman further contended that the January 6th Select Committee “gave partial truth, and sometimes maybe even given Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony, was clearly in error, if not just falsehoods. … And the witnesses who were on the scene that the January 6th Select Committee had in their possession before they issued their report was not in that report. And they should have given the American people the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. They chose not to do so because they had a political agenda.”

Griffith additionally noted that Pelosi kept “conservative Republicans off of the commission, who could have asked the pointed questions, who could have brought out [further] information,” further detailing that “there was about a terabyte of information that was deleted or attempted to be deleted by the J6 Select Committee. That should have gone to the archives of the United States. That’s just gone.”

“[L]et all the proper evidence in and let the chips fall where they may,” Griffith concluded. “Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. But you know what? They didn’t do that. They tilted the scales of justice for political reasons, and it’s atrocious.”