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Faced with federal charges that could land them in jail, some of the defendants accused of participating in the attack on the U.S. Capitol are preparing to blame other participants – or former President Donald Trump.
More than 100 people have been pre-charged in federal court in the District of Columbia in connection with the riot, according to a list provided by the Department of Justice. The charges range from knowingly entering or staying in any building or restricted property without legal authorization to assaulting a federal agent. The most serious offenses carry sentences of up to 20 years in prison, but federal officials have said more serious charges could be laid.
In many cases, their presence on Capitol Hill is well documented in photos and videos online, which prosecutors use to prepare their cases.
“It is difficult to refute approximately 10,000 miles of video footage reflecting and depicting my client at the Capitol on January 6,” Albert Watkins, a St. Louis-based lawyer who portrays Jacob Chansley, the shirtless man wearing a horned helmet known as the “QAnon Shaman,” Yahoo News said.
The presence at the scene of Chansley, who faces charges of civil unrest and entering a restricted building, “isn’t the problem,” Watkins said; the problem was that a group comprising his client felt a special connection to Trump and was ready to do whatever he asked of him. “And on January 6, my client, who had been fueled by an ongoing dialogue with other like-minded people, appeared to answer the president’s call to help him save our country,” Watkins said.
Watkins was indirectly citing Trump’s remarks at a rally ahead of the Jan.6 riot, in which he urged them to “fight like hell” to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, which he said he had been stolen from him. The attack on Capitol Hill came as Congress counted the electoral college’s votes to certify President Biden’s victory.
“They listened [Trump] and his cohorts talk to them in a way that’s akin to a high school football coach on a Friday night talking to his team and getting them all horny in the locker room before he rushes out onto the football pitch with them, ”Watkins said.
But Trump didn’t run on the metaphorical pitch, instead returning to the White House to watch the chaos on TV. After tweeting his “love” for rioters (“you are very special,” he added), he finally – after it became apparent that the effort to topple the government had failed – denounced riot, if not explicitly rioters.
“Crowd violence goes against everything I believe in,” Trump said in a video, “and everything our movement stands for. None of my true supporters will ever be able to endorse political violence. Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives on January 13 for his role in instigating the attack and is expected to stand trial in the Senate.
Mike Scibetta, an attorney from Rochester, New York, who represents Dominic Pezzola, charged with obstructing official proceedings and destroying government property, said his defense team was aware of how Trump’s involvement could affect the case against his client.
“We have an arm of the prosecution government, which is apparently going to sue a president for instigating and inviting these people to come there,” Scibetta told Yahoo News. “This begs the question. How, on the other hand, can you not say that they weren’t invited to come there? Have they been asked to break things? Probably not. But the intrusion certainly raises the question: Am I an intrusion when the highest power in the country invited me down to Capitol Hill?
The Capitol, for the record, is the seat of Congress, a separate and co-equal branch of government over which the president has no direct authority.
Lori Ulrich, a federal public defender in Harrisburg, Pa., Said at a hearing in Pennsylvania for her client Riley June Williams that it was “unfortunate that Ms. Williams took the president’s bait and walked into the Capitol.” , NBC Philadelphia reported. Williams is accused of stealing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s laptop from her office with the intention of selling it to Russian intelligence services, according to the criminal complaint against Williams. Ulrich declined to comment further on his statement in an interview with Yahoo News. “We’re in the very early stages of the process,” she said, “so there’s a lot that we don’t know.”
Of the lawyers who have spoken publicly, Watkins is perhaps the most willing to blame Trump squarely, but other lawyers have at least tacitly acknowledged that they are considering what is called a “defense of” public authority ”, meaning that their clients believed they were acting under the direction of the president.
“I can’t say if Trump has any responsibility,” James Whalen, a Frisco, Texas attorney for Troy Smocks, told Yahoo News. Smocks is accused of making riot-related threats on the now defunct conservative social media app Speak.
According to the criminal complaint, Smocks reportedly wrote: “Today, January 6, 2021, we Patriots, in their millions, arrived in Washington, DC, carrying banners of support for the greatest president the world has ever known. But if we have to … Many of us will return on January 19, 2021, bearing our arms in support of our nation’s resolution the world will never forget. We will come in numbers that no army or standing police agency can match. However, the police are NOT our enemy, unless they choose to be! Anyone who won’t be with the American Patriots … or who can’t stay with us, then this would be a good time for you to take a few days off.
There was more, Whalen said, adding: “When you look at the whole message in context, there is a reference to what President Trump said in his [Jan. 6] speech.”
Whalen, along with all the other attorneys who spoke to Yahoo News, denied the allegations on behalf of their clients but admitted they were on Capitol Hill during the riot.
Scibetta said Trump’s perceived role was “something to explore” as a legal argument. “It is a legitimate and rational basis for these people, [who] in most cases they would have been at home, going about their daily business, if the most powerful man, arguably in the world but certainly in the country, had not said, “Come on, make your voice heard, come to the Capitol.
With dozens of defendants from across the country and a chaotic scene to analyze, some attorneys steer their clients away from what they describe as bad actors who seemed to spur violence and destruction on Capitol Hill.
“He’s put in touch with some people who may have acted violently,” defense attorney Jason DiPasquale said of his client, Peter Harding, who is from a town near Buffalo, in the New York State. , of which DiPasquale records crimes.
“He has in no way, form or form won the entry [to the Capitol] by violence, “said DiPasquale,” or participated in any of the acts of violence that were posted [by] the media, to which others may be engaged. “
Watkins said there were footage of his client being let into the building. “Some [people] had no intention of walking to the Capitol, let alone entering it, ”he said. “[And] you had bad apples.
Some jurists doubt that these arguments are gaining ground before a judge or jury. “For the most part, these allegations do not constitute serious legal defenses,” Daniel Richman, former federal prosecutor and professor at Columbia Law School, told Yahoo News.
“They could still appear before juries, if cases go to trial, and potentially affect assessments of intention and knowledge,” he said. “But given that so few cases go to trial and those who do will go to DC jurors who I suspect will not be sympathetic-inclined, I would be surprised if the claims progress.
Maneka Sinha, a criminal defense specialist and professor at the University of Maryland School of Law, told Yahoo News that some of these defenses may be better served for mitigation purposes, especially during the determination phase. sentence or when they plead for provisional release.
“If these cases go to trial, jurors will have to decide whether such claims are credible. But at first, the information that is already publicly available seems to contradict the idea that it would be easy to believe that you have done nothing wrong. We have fences, barricades, policemen pushing people back, orders to stop. And then on top of that, the pretty basic facts that they come under federal ownership while Congress was in session, much for the explicit purpose of annulling the election.
Sinha noted that it was too early to speculate on the outcome of the cases. While many criminal cases are resolved by a plea deal, many Capitol riot cases do not have that option.
“It’s not every day that the Capitol is violated,” she said. “So we don’t know if prosecutors are going to handle these cases the way they do regular cases, and they may not be.”
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