Facing federal accusations that could lead them to prison, some of the defendants accused of participating in the U.S. Capitol attack are preparing to blame other participants – or former President Donald Trump.
More than 100 people were preliminarily charged in a 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 intentionally entering or staying in any building or restricted area without legal authority to assaulting a federal official. The most serious crimes carry sentences of up to 20 years in prison, but federal officials said more serious charges could be made.
In many cases, their presence on Capitol is well documented in online photos and videos, which prosecutors are using to build their cases.
“It’s hard to refute about 10,000 miles of video footage reflecting and portraying my client on Capitol on January 6,” Albert Watkins, a St. Louis lawyer who represents Jacob Chansley, the shirtless and horned man known as the “QAnon shaman,” he told Yahoo News.
Chansley’s presence at the crime scene, which faces charges of civil disorder and entering a restricted building, “is not the problem,” said Watkins; the problem is that a group that included his client felt a special bond with Trump and was willing to do whatever he asked. “And on January 6, my client, who had been spurred on by an ongoing dialogue with other like-minded people, seemed to heed the president’s call to help him save our country,” said Watkins.
Watkins was indirectly quoting Trump’s comments at a rally before the January 6 riot, during which he urged them to “fight like hell” to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, which he falsely claims was stolen from him . The attack on the Capitol took place while Congress counted the votes of the Electoral College to certify President Biden’s victory.
“They heard [Trump] and his teammates talk to them in a similar way to a high school football coach on a Friday night talking to his team and getting everyone excited in the locker room before running to the football field with them, ”he said. Watkins. .
But Trump did not rush into the metaphorical field, instead returning to the White House to watch the chaos on television. After tweeting his “love” for the rioters (“you are very special,” he added), he finally – after it became clear that the effort to overthrow the government had failed – denounced the riot, if not explicitly the rioters.
“The violence of the crowd goes against everything I believe in,” said Trump in a video, “and everything that our movement represents. No true supporter of mine could ever endorse political violence. Trump was accused by the House of Representatives on January 13 for his role in encouraging the attack and is due to be tried in the Senate.
Mike Scibetta, a lawyer from Rochester, NY, who represents Dominic Pezzola, accused of obstructing an official lawsuit and destroying government property, said his defense team is aware of how Trump’s involvement could affect the case against his client.
“We have an arm of the prosecuting government, apparently it will sue a president for inciting and inviting these individuals to come there,” Scibetta told Yahoo News. “This raises the question. How, on the other hand, can you not say that they were not invited to come there? Were they asked to break things? Probably not. But surely the transgression raises the question: Am I invading when the highest power in the country invited me to come down to the Capitol? “
The Capitol, for the record, is the seat of Congress, a separate and equal branch of government over which the president has no direct authority.
Lori Ulrich, a federal public defender in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, said at a hearing in Pennsylvania to her client Riley June Williams that it is “unfortunate that Ms. Williams took the president’s bait and entered the Capitol,” reported NBC Philadelphia. Williams is accused of stealing the mayor’s laptop, Nancy Pelosi, from his office with the intention of selling it to Russian intelligence, according to the criminal complaint against Williams. Ulrich declined to comment further on his statement in an interview with Yahoo News. “We are in the early stages of the process,” she said, “so there is a lot we don’t know.”
Of the lawyers who spoke publicly, Watkins is perhaps the most willing to place the blame directly on Trump, but other lawyers have acknowledged, at least tacitly, that they are considering what is known as a “public authority” defense, meaning that their customers believed they were acting under the direction of the president.
“I can’t say whether Trump has any responsibility,” James Whalen, a lawyer for Troy Smocks in Frisco, Texas, told Yahoo News. Smocks is accused of making threats related to the riot in the now defunct conservative social media application Parler.
According to the criminal complaint, Smocks allegedly wrote: “Today, January 6, 2021, we patriots reach the millions in Washington, DC, carrying banners in support of the greatest president the world has ever known. But if we must … Many of us will return on January 19, 2021, carrying our weapons in support of our nation’s decision, which the world will never forget. We will arrive at numbers that no standing army or police agency can match. However, the police are NOT our enemy, unless they want to be! Anyone who doesn’t stay with the American Patriots … or can’t be with us, then it 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 job in context, there is reference to what President Trump said in his [Jan. 6] speech.”
Whalen, along with all the other lawyers who spoke to Yahoo News, denied the allegations on behalf of his clients, but acknowledged that they were on Capitol Hill during the riot.
Scibetta said Trump’s perceived role is “something to explore” as a legal argument. “It is a legitimate and rational basis for these people, [who] in most cases, he would be at home, minding his daily lives, if the most powerful man, arguably in the world, but certainly in the country, had not said: ‘Come down, make your voice heard, come to the Capitol.’ “
With dozens of defendants from across the country and a chaotic scene to analyze, some lawyers are distancing their clients from what they describe as bad actors who seemed to fuel violence and destruction on Capitol Hill.
“He’s being mistaken for certain individuals who may have acted violently,” said defense attorney Jason DiPasquale of his client, Peter Harding, who is from a town near Buffalo, NY. Harding is accused of entering a restricted building, as well as of violent and disorderly conduct, which DiPasquale notes are misdemeanors.
“He in no way, shape or form gained entry [to the Capitol] through violence, ”said DiPasquale,“ or participated in any of the violent acts that were shown [by] the media, that others may have participated. “
Watkins said there was footage of his client being admitted to the building. “Some [people] I had no intention of walking to the Capitol, let alone entering it, ”he said. “[And] you ate some that were rotten apples. “
Some jurists doubt that these arguments gain strength before a judge or jury. “Most of the time, these complaints do not represent serious legal defenses,” Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor and professor at Columbia Law School, told Yahoo News via email.
“They can still reach the juries, if the cases go to trial, and potentially affect assessments of intention and knowledge,” he said. “But since so few cases go to trial, and those going through DC juries that I suspect are not going to be sympathetic, I would be surprised if the claims made progress.
Maneka Sinha, a criminal defense expert 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, specifically during the sentencing phase or when they are arguing for pre-release. judgment.
“If these cases go to trial, juries will have to decide whether claims like this are credible. But, at first, the information that is already available to the public seems to belie the idea that it would be easy to believe that you were not doing anything wrong. We have fences, we have barricades, police pushing people back, orders to stop. And, in addition, the basic facts that they are entering federal property while Congress was in session, many with the explicit purpose of voiding the election. ”
Sinha noted that it is too early to speculate on the outcome of the cases. While many criminal cases are resolved with a plea bargain, many Capitol riot cases do not have that option.
“It is not every day that the Capitol is violated,” she said. “So we don’t know whether prosecutors will handle these cases the way they treat ordinary cases, and maybe not.”
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