A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The Trump administration is actively trying to rewrite the history of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which took place five years ago this week. A new NPR investigative project is preserving the evidence of the crimes committed that day as part of a public archive. Now, we've reviewed thousands of videos submitted in court and have reinterviewed participants on both sides of the riot.
NPR investigative correspondent Tom Dreisbach is here with us. Tom, so President Trump has called January 6 a, quote, "day of love." What actions has he taken to change the way the attack is being perceived and its history preserved?
TOM DREISBACH, BYLINE: Well, first, of course, there were the mass pardons that people probably remember from last year for basically every defendant. That included all of the most violent rioters. And then the administration started deleting government records, like wanted posters for unsolved assault cases, as well as a government database of all the January 6 cases. We, along with other news organizations, actually had to go to court to make sure they preserved video evidence, which had started to disappear.
And then you can look at who works for the administration. They fired dozens of prosecutors who worked on January 6 cases. And then they hired people who spread conspiracy theories about January 6, like FBI director Kash Patel, and then - as well as advocates for the rioters, like DOJ official Ed Martin. The DOJ even hired a former January 6 defendant, a man named Jared Wise, who was on tape at the riot calling cops Nazis and Gestapo and encouraging rioters to, quote, "kill them."
MARTÍNEZ: OK. Now, tell us about the NPR project.
DREISBACH: Well, we've tracked every single January 6 case from the very beginning in a public and searchable database. It's more than 1,500 cases in total. And now that the administration has deleted the government's database, this really is the most comprehensive resource on those cases out there. Since the beginning, we've been focused on the facts - evidence presented and evaluated in court, not just political rhetoric. And January 6 is probably the most videotaped crime in history, so we systematically reviewed thousands of videos. We added hundreds to the database so people can look at them, and we created a visual timeline of that day's events. The idea is that people can see the evidence for themselves, compare it to what the president is saying and then a lot of the other myths that are out there.
MARTÍNEZ: Ooh. Speaking of myths, what are some of the - those myths that you've encountered over the years?
DREISBACH: Well, one of the most persistent myths on the right is that January 6 was some kind of setup by the quote-unquote deep state to discredit Trump. There's just no evidence of that, and the administration has not produced any. There is also the myth that Trump has repeated that the rioters were unarmed. Again, totally false. We've got the videos showing rioters using stolen police batons, pepper spray, bear spray, stun guns, wooden clubs, and several we know were armed with guns.
There's also a claim that the rioters were over-prosecuted. That is what the White House argued to me, and that is ultimately a matter of opinion. I think it is helpful, though, to add some context to that - that more than a thousand people pleaded guilty. Hundreds - that's about a third of the people who were sentenced - received no jail time at all. The median sentence was just 30 days in jail. But regardless, you can evaluate all those cases for yourself at our website.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. That's NPR investigative correspondent Tom Dreisbach. Thanks for your work on this.
DREISBACH: Thanks, A. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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