U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., has called the Jan. 6 violence at the U.S. Capitol an insurrection, and sued former President Donald Trump for the melee.
Actually, thousands of Trump supporters went to the Capitol building after a rally that day, hundreds broke into the building and dozens got violent, leaving behind vandalism and mess.
The result has been that hundreds have been charged, and some kept without a court hearing on bail for months. The commission is investigating, and has issued subpoenas indicating that it will try to assemble a formal statement that would blame Trump, and Republicans.
Actually, some of the protesters were allowed into the building by security officers, and video has revealed sometimes they would fist-bump each other.
But Thompson, early in his career, took the side of the Republic of New Africa, a group that the FBI considered to have done “guerrilla warfare,” and stood up at a news conference blaming police for the gang’s violence.
According to a report from Just the News, Thompson, as an alderman in a small Mississippi community in 1971, defended the clashes that included the killing of a police officer and the wounding of an FBI agent.
“Thompson’s official biography makes no reference to the separatist RNA,” the report noted.
The report said Thompson affinity for the RNA continued through at least 2013, “when he openly campaigned on behalf of the group’s former vice president to be mayor of Mississippi’s largest city,” the report said.
The congressman’s promotion of the RNA, documented in newspaper clippings, video footage, and archives from law enforcement offices, “is a pointed reminder that some of the far-left figures of a half century ago are now the Democratic Party’s establishment leaders, their pasts now a fleeting footnote in the frenzied vitriol of modern-day Washington,” Just the News said.
The report noted, for example, Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., of the Congressional Black Caucus, “co-founded the extremist Black Panthers chapter in Illinois in 1968 before he entered politics.”
That organization at one point stormed the state capitol in California.
While he was alderman in Bolton, Miss., decades back, Thompson became acquainted with, and sided with the RNA, but never was charged with wrongdoing even though law enforcement suspected the group of training for potential war.
“Just the News was alerted to Thompson’s embrace of the RNA by former federal law enforcement officials and Mississippi state officials who remembered his advocacy for the group and criticism of police. Just the News obtained video footage, newspaper clippings and law enforcement documents from historical archives and the FBI that validate their story,” the report said.
The RNA attack on police actually came in Detroit, where an FBI account explained a Detroit patrol car carrying two officers encountered the group.
“Officers stopped and alit from scout car, and as they approached the group, they were fired upon,” the teletype said. “Officer Czapski was killed and [redacted name] was seriously wounded.”
The Mississippi link appeared when the FBI wanted to move its operations to a piece of farmland near Bolton. Their goal was to renounce U.S. citizenship and “create a separate New Africa country,” the report said.
Law enforcement concern followed the group, and eventually several were arrested.
“Thompson took the lead in bashing law enforcement for pursuing RNA, claiming officers were ‘often times beating and kicking those who emphasized their constitutional rights,'” Just the News reported.
By the time Thompson was speaking in their defense, members of RNA, the FBI concluded, “had engaged in multiple violent crimes, and posed a national security threat with its stated plan to take over the states of Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina and Georgia to create a secessionist new country for African-Americans,” the report said.
In archived video, Hinds County Sheriff Fred Thomas said the encounter actually happened this way: “They started slamming doors in our face and running against the doors and cursing us, and we advised them we was the law, we had to come in. … They didn’t want us to carry out our duties. So we had to make arrests upon these people. And in the meantime, we recovered numerous amounts of guns, ammunition, radio equipment, and a good many more things.”
Thompson didn’t respond to JTN requests for comment.
The FBI had found the group to be a “black extremist, separatist organization whose purpose is the formation of a black nation within the United States and a black army to defend and attack its enemies.”
Eventually, the RNA was blamed for violent crimes that included a deadly bank robbery in New York and the fatal shooting of a policeman in New Mexico.
Content created by the WND News Center is available for re-publication without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected].
SUPPORT TRUTHFUL JOURNALISM. MAKE A DONATION TO THE NONPROFIT WND NEWS CENTER. THANK YOU!
This article was originally published by the WND News Center.
