  A militant Donald Trump supporter whose photo is featured on an FBI wanted list because he was caught on video battling with police officers at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 attended a political event last week for a Trump-loving Pennsylvania politician who backed the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The event’s headliner: Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who called for “trial by combat” during his speech on Jan. 6 and whose phones and computers were seized in a Justice Department investigation last month.
Samuel Lazar, who is Capitol suspect No. 275 on the FBI website, posed for photos alongside right-wing Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R) at the May 15 event headlined by Giuliani. A tipster sent the photos to HuffPost after spotting them on Facebook.
Both Mastriano and Lazar were at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, though Mastriano claimed he left when he realized the protest was no longer peaceful. Mastriano, whose campaign spent thousands of dollars on buses to bring people to D.C. on Jan. 6, later issued a statement saying those who violated the law must be prosecuted. Mastriano’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Politicians, of course, take photos with people they don’t vet all the time. Yet it illustrates how, even as some conservatives attempt to rewrite the history of Jan. 6 and spread new conspiracy theories about who was really behind the insurrection, the people who actually violently participated in the attack ― and in fact instructed the mob with a bullhorn ― are still deeply ingrained in the Trump coalition.
The top Republican in the House of Representatives has come out against a bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol because the commission wouldn’t blame Black Lives Matter for the attack. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in a statement Tuesday that the proposed commission “ignores the political violence that has struck American cities” and that it has a “shortsighted scope that does not examine interrelated forms of political violence in America.” In an effort to galvanize Republicans who are still harping on claims that the 2020 election was stolen, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) declared Monday that he accepted the election outcome and that it was time to move on to future campaigns. “2020 is over for me,” he added, per Newsweek. I’m ready to march on and hopefully take back the House and the Senate in 2022.”
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