'Defamatory!' White House defiant after video surfaces of Trump nominee at J6 rally

EJ Antoni, President Donald Trump's controversial nominee to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics, was among the insurrectionist mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, NBC Newsrevealed Wednesday.

Video footage archived from the right-wing social media site Parler and posted online by a Republican-led congressional subcommittee shows Antoni among the crowd about half an hour before the MAGA mob began breaching barricades, attacking police, and swarming the Capitol. He is also seen walking away from the crowd.

The White House attempted to downplay the news, with spokesperson Taylor Rogers saying that "these pictures show E.J. Antoni, a bystander to the events of January 6th, observing and then leaving the Capitol area."

"E.J. was in town for meetings, and it is wrong and defamatory to suggest E.J. engaged in anything inappropriate or illegal," Rogers added.

Other MAGA figures also defended Antoni. Felonious fraudster Steve Bannon, who pleaded guilty in a border wall fundraising fraud case this year, said Thursday on his War Room podcast: "They came up with a photo of E.J. Antoni in the crowd outside the Capitol on January 6, and NBC went absolutely nuts over it. I think it makes E.J. even more based. I didn't know that about E.J.—makes us want him even more."

Critics, however, expressed alarm, given the important post to which Antoni was nominated.

"We just discovered a Trump [Department of Justice] official was at January 6, telling other traitors to 'kill' police," journalist and attorney Adam Cohen wrote on the social media site Bluesky, referring to Jared Wise, who was pardoned by Trump.

"Now we learn Trump's BLS nominee, E.J. Antoni—apart from being totally unqualified—was ALSO part of the insurrection," Cohen added. "The inmates are not only running the asylum. They're bringing in MORE inmates to help."

The West Virginia Federation of Democratic Women noted on the social media site X that "Trump fired the vetted woman who reported honest stats on job losses. His new guy was in the mob on January 6 and wrote Project 2025."

Journalist Ahmed Baba wrote on X: "So, E.J. Antoni is the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, a contributor to Project 2025, and was literally outside the Capitol on January 6. This is who Trump wants to be in charge of the BLS data that shapes global decisions and moves markets—an extremist sycophant."

Trump nominated Antoni after firing former BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, whom the president accused without evidence of manipulating employment statistics to discredit him and other Republicans.