Around the same time that President Biden said former President Donald J. Trump was encouraging the violence that took place at the Capitol on Jan. 6, some of Mr. Trump’s most prominent supporters averted the blame for the attack during a live appearance online. show.
On the show, hosted by Stephen K. Bannon, one of Mr. Trump’s former top advisers, Representatives Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene placed responsibility on the Democrats, the Capitol Police, the federal government, and others.
The idea that people other than Trump’s own supporters were responsible for the violence that day has become a popular conspiracy theory among the far right. There is no evidence that undercover agents or other outsiders played a role in the attack, and fact-checkers have tried to debunk similar claims on Fox News. The pair offered lawmakers little evidence for their claims during the show.
Mr. Gaetz, a Republican from Florida, reiterated on Thursday some of the baseless allegations, including that the government and police were trying to incite the protesters.
“We are here to find out the truth behind January 6, the federal government’s involvement in it,” said Mr. Gaetz in his hour-long interview on “Bannon’s War Room.”
Mr. Gaetz said that if Republicans took control of Congress after this year’s midterm elections, he would take over the Jan. 6 committee investigating what happened, make Ms. Greene the committee chair, and use it to role that federal agencies played in the attack.
Ms. Greene, a Republican from Georgia, rejected the idea that hundreds of arrests made sense and suggested looking at Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s phone records. She also wondered how many Capitol Police were there that day.
Twitter permanently suspended Ms Greene’s personal account on Sunday after the company said it had repeatedly violated its misinformation policy about Covid-19. She addressed the ban on the show, calling it “a direct attack” on the government.
“I don’t want to alarm anyone,” she said. “I think our country is already gone. I think we are after the Constitution and I think China is absolutely ahead of us.”
Mr. Bannon’s podcast has become a hub for right-wing thoughts after the January 6 raid on the Capitol. It was flagged in an analysis by the Brookings Institution for sharing more misinformation about the election than other top political talk shows on Apple Podcasts.
