WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump's pick to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics was among the crowd outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, with the White House saying he was a "bystander" who wandered over after seeing coverage on the news.
E.J. Antoni, an economist from the Heritage Foundation nominated by Trump this week, after the president fired the previous BLS head, appears in numerous videos posted on social media of the crowd on the Capitol grounds.
The footage shows Antoni approximately an hour after the mob removed police barricades. The footage appears to show him leaving the grounds as people entered the Capitol and not entering the building.
Antoni is on the west side of the Capitol in one video, archived from the social media website Parler, and appears in surveillance footage posted online by the Republican-led Committee on House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight.
Reached by NBC News on Tuesday, Antoni declined to comment. A White House official said Wednesday that Antoni was in Washington on Jan. 6 for in-person meetings with his then-employer at an office blocks away from the Capitol, and that he did not cross any barricades or participate in any demonstrations. The footage does not show Antoni crossing barricades or demonstrating.
The Parler video, which was also archived by ProPublica, shows Antoni walking away from the crowd on the west side of the Capitol grounds. Tear gas was in the air, and conservative radio host Alex Jones can be heard speaking over a megaphone.
At that time, police were struggling to hold off the mob from taking over the inauguration platform. The crowd had surrounded the building but not yet entered the Capitol.
Other footage shows Antoni on the east side of the Capitol building, walking south, away from the building.
“These pictures show EJ Antoni, a bystander to the events of January 6th, observing and then leaving the Capitol area,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in an e-mailed statement. “EJ was in town for meetings, and it is wrong and defamatory to suggest EJ engaged in anything inappropriate or illegal.”
The Justice Department's investigation into the Jan. 6 attack was the largest in its history, with prosecutors scouring video evidence to identify and charge participants. The department mostly focused on charging individuals who entered the Capitol building or engaged in aggravating behavior outside. On his first day in office Trump ended the investigation into the Jan. 6 attack, pardoned all of the roughly 1,500 Capitol defendants and commuted the sentences of others.
Trump fired former BLS head Erika McEntarfer earlier this month, suggesting without evidence that she had "rigged" jobs reports for political purposes. The president then said he would nominate Antoni, a frequent guest on Steve Bannon's "War Room," who has long criticized the BLS.
Antoni said in an interview with Fox News on Aug. 4, before his nomination, that the agency should suspend issuing the monthly job report, instead publishing quarterly data until the reports are more "accurate."
Antoni will need to be confirmed by the Senate to take over the BLS.
While Republicans control the chamber, Jan. 6 has caused issues for Trump nominees in the past. Trump withdrew his nomination of Ed Martin to take over the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia after Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., indicated that Martin’s past support for Jan. 6 participants would be a deal-breaker.
