President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized a federal judge who apologized to White House Correspondents’ Association dinner shooting suspect Cole Allen, saying that those charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot never got an apology.
Trump is referring to a situation that took place during one of Allen’s court appearances for his alleged assassination attempt on the president, where Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui apologized for Allen’s strict confinement, claiming that Jan. 6 defendants were jailed under looser measures.
The president discussed the situation on “Sid & Friends in the Morning” with Sid Rosenberg, noting that the same grace was not extended to those charged for the Capitol riots.
“It’s all over the place where the judge is apologizing to him for, I guess maybe something was a little bit wrong, but they never apologized to J6,” Trump said. “The J6 folks that I, as you know, pardoned very proudly, and nobody apologized to them.”
Faruqui oversaw Jan. 6 cases as a benchmark and condemned Allen’s placement on suicide-watch protocols at the jail, despite defense attorneys saying repeated mental health screenings found no indication he posed a risk to himself.
Those detained after the events on Jan. 6 were placed in restrictive housing inside the district jail, including for extended periods of isolation, prompting criticism from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
Trump later added that reports of Faruqui apologizing made him “very sad.” He went on to praise the Secret Service agents who protected him and emphasized the need for his planned ballroom, which will have better security measures.
“The world is different than it used to be,” he said. “Things like this happened in the past, too, you know. This isn’t the first time you’ve heard the ‘a’ word,” he said, referring to the assassination attempt.
The president then offered a light-hearted tone, calling the presidency a “dangerous profession.”
“You should have told me that at the beginning,” Trump said. “I could have taken a pass, OK. But it’s a dangerous profession, that’s for sure.”
On May 11, Allen pled not guilty to charges of attempting to assassinate the president, assaulting a federal officer with a deadly weapon, transporting a firearm and ammunition across state lines with intent to commit a felony, and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence.