- Sen. Lindsey Graham accused Biden of politicizing the January 6 insurrection.
- In a speech at the Capitol, Biden blamed Trump for causing the riot — without explicitly naming him.
- The January 6 attack on the Capitol, which sought to overturn an election, was itself political.
Sen. Lindsey Graham accused President Joe Biden of politicizing the January 6 insurrection during which a violent mob breached the US Capitol in order to stop Congress from affirming the results of the 2020 election.
Biden delivered a rare presidential address from Statuary Hall at the Capitol on the one-year anniversary of the January 6, 2021 attack.
Biden, without explicitly naming the former president, blamed Donald Trump and his supporters for perpetuating the lies about the 2020 election that led to the insurrection.
"And here's the truth: the former president of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election," Biden said. "He's done so because he values power over principle. Because he sees his own interest as more important than his country's interest, than America's interest. And because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our constitution."
"I still cannot believe a mob was able to take over the United States Capitol during such a pivotal moment – certifying a presidential election. It would have been so easy for terrorists to boot strap onto this protest and wreak even further destruction on the U.S. Capitol," Graham added in a subsequent Twitter thread.
"The Biden Presidency, one year after January 6, is in free fall not because of the attack on our Capitol, but because of failed policies and weak leadership," Graham added. "The Biden Administration seems to be incapable of dealing with the challenges America faces, and their efforts to politicize January 6 will fall flat."
The January 6 insurrection was inherently political. A violent mob of Trump's supporters, spurred on by his lies that the 2020 election had been stolen from him, breached the US Capitol in an effort to halt Congress from affirming Biden's electoral college victory in the joint session of Congress on January 6. 2021.
The rioters injured hundreds of law enforcement officers, breached the Senate chamber, and committed significant property damage. Some brought confederate flags into the Capitol, erected gallows outside, and chanted "Hang Mike Pence!" during the riots.
Graham himself is one of the subjects of an investigation by the Fulton County, Georgia district attorney's office into efforts by top Republican officials, including Trump, to overturn Trump's 2020 election loss in the state.
Georgia's Secretary of State and chief election official Brad Raffensperger told The Washington Post in November 2020 that Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked outright if he could disqualify thousands of mail ballots for mismatched signatures.
Raffensperger said Graham questioned whether ballots with mismatched signatures were wrongly accepted because of election workers holding political bias towards Democrats, and also if Raffensperger himself could throw out all the mail ballots cast in counties with higher-than-average rates of ballots being flagged for signature issues.
Graham disputed Raffensperger's account of the conversation while talking to reporters on Capitol Hill, saying that Raffensperger "did a good job" explaining the signature verification process and called the notion that he pressured Raffensperger to get ballots disqualified "ridiculous."