In seeking to keep Troy Faulkner--who wore his monogrammed work coat to the riot--jailed, prosecutors went to the Architect of the Capitol for an estimate of the damage he caused by kicking out a window of the building.
Total?
More than $10k w/replacement, shutters & paint.
NEW: Meet the Parkers, Sandra and Bennie, two alleged members of the Oath Keepers charged in a conspiracy with other militia men & women to disrupt the certification of the Electoral College vote.
After telling co-conspirator Jessica Watkins that he and his wife, 60, are retirees & free to go to DC on Jan. 6, Bennie Parker, 70, asks if he can show up armed.
"So can I bring my gun?"
Oath Keeper chats:
After the riot, Watkins & Bennie Parker swap texts saying they don't think the FBI is "on" us.
"I wouldn't worry about them coming after us," Watkins says.
Bennie is actually more concerned about Sandi's "sinus problems," which are finally getting better.
FACEBOOK FRIEND: Did you go inside the Capitol building?
ZACHARY WILSON: First ones in!!! First thing we found was Pelosi's office.
FACEBOOK FRIEND: You're lucky you aren't in jail. That wasn't real smart.
NEW: Six more Oath Keepers indicted in conspiracy to disrupt certification of the Electoral College vote at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
This is in addition to the Oath Keeper couple charged this morning.
Story coming.
Correction: The Ohio couple charged this morning are part of this new case.
Prosecutors charge Joseph Fisher, a police officer from N Cornwall, Pa., in connection w/the Capitol attack.
After the riot, Fisher told a friend he feared for his job after his chief asked about his role in it.
"I told him I have no regrets & give zero shits," Fisher said.
Oath Keeper Jessica Watkins, seeking pre-trial release, suggests she was duped by Trump into believing the lie of election fraud.
"Trump told the public the only way he could lose the presidential election was if the election was rigged...Ms. Watkins was one of those people."
Wait...WHAT?
Oath Keeper Jessica Watkins claims she met with the Secret Service and was only in DC on Jan. 6 to provide security for "legislators and others to march to the Capitol as directed by the then-President."
Here Watkins blames her two-month long plot to overturn the presidential election, documented in texts and other communications, on "the former president, his supporters, and the right wing media."
Oath Keeper Jessica Watkins, charged in the most serious conspiracy to date to attack the Capitol and overturn the results of the presidential election, identifies as transgender, new court paper say.
Emanuel Jackson, a 20-year-old homeless man w/an intellectual disability, took a bus to DC on 1/6, listened to Trump then, "at the urging of President," his lawyer said today, went to the Capitol where he attacked a cop w/a baseball bat.
Trump "incited" him, the lawyer says.
A lawyer for Oath Keeper Jessica Watkins walks back the claim that she met w/Secret Service before the Capitol attack. "A better verb would have been 'encountered,'" the lawyer writes in a new court filing.
Strange. More on this to come for sure...
Prosecutors seemed to be taking every available opportunity to mention Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, in court filings surrounding the Capitol insurrection.
Here, they mention him in court papers seeking to keep OK Jessica Watkins in jail pretrial.
As GOP Sen. Ron Johnson claims the Capitol was attacked by anti-Trumpers, DOJ brings charges against Jose Padilla of Tennessee.
"It was not Antifa," Padilla wrote on FB after the riot. "They were Patriots who were trying to Restore the Republic after being attacked by the cops."
Prosecutors have charged Tristan Stevens w/attacking cops in the tunnel under the lower west terrace of the Capitol, site of one of the most pitched battles on Jan. 6.
He was ID'd partly from the mole on his right cheek, the FBI says.
What caused Jacob Chansley, the Q Shaman, to "reconcile his prior faith" in Trump?
He says it was Trump's decision to pardon Lil Wayne not him.
Chansley's remark about Trump came in a memo seeking release from pretrial custody.
Among the arguments he made to the judge was that he twice offered to testify at Trump's impeachment trial that he was merely following the then-president's orders on Jan. 6
In other bail arguments, the Q Shaman says he has no criminal history--except...the speeding ticket he got somewhere in Oklahoma while driving from the Capitol insurrection back to Phoenix.
Chansley notes that after "self-analyzing" he has "zero interest" in politics now and would like to focus his energies, in the post insurrectionary period, on promoting a life which "does no harm to any living being, regardless of its size or complexity."
Court filings for former NYPD officer Thomas Webster say he attacked a cop Officer N.M. at the Capitol, yelling “You fucking Commie motherfuckers!”
Typo: Officer N. R.
The photos prosecutors included in former NYPD cop Thomas Webster's criminal complaint show a truly brutal assault. It's hand to hand combat as swings a pole at a fellow officer and rips his gas mask off.
The FBI credits private sleuths using the hashtag #seditionhunters for new charges against Clayton Mullins, accused of assaulting MPD Officer A.W. at the Capitol.
Using #seditionhunters tips, the feds say they tracked Mullins to Kentucky and were ultimately able to grab this photo of him at his local bank...
Prosecutors have also unsealed charges against Rachael Genco who, they say, traveled to DC on Jan. 6 w/Ryan Samsel.
Samsel, who was charged last month, was one of the first rioters to confront cops and breach barricades at the Capitol, prosecutors say.
Richard Michetti sent a series of texts on Jan 6 to his ex saying he had "stormed the building" and adding, "If you can't see the election was stolen you're a moron."
Unfortunately for Michetti, the ex sent the texts on to the FBI.
A few new details in a strongly worded release memo just unsealed in the Capitol riot case of Seattle Proud Boy leader Ethan Nordean.
His lawyers say the feds tossed flash bangs while raiding his house & detained his wife after taking her gunpoint.
Nordean's case will yet another to litigate the limits of using the govt property destruction laws to keep Capitol riot defendants in custody. His lawyers also went right at the govt's argument that Proud Boys membership is cause for detention.
Let's see what Judge Howell says.
DC Chief Judge Beryl Howell is again expressing skepticism about a Trump Made Do It defense--this time at a hearing in the case of 20 year old homeless man, Emanuel Jackson, charged w/assaulting cops at the Capitol w/a metal baseball bat.
Judge Howell also looked askance at a Trump-based defense on Tuesday in the case of Kansas City Proud Boy William Chrestman.
Hey law nerds, Is storming the Capitol a crime of violence triggering a bail hearing?
Not if it's akin to throwing blood @ the building, spray painting Secret Service records, cutting trees in a natl forest or stealing a deer head, says the lawyer for Oath Keeper Jessica Watkins.
The question is one of the legal issues cropping up in several Capitol riot cases. Stay tuned!
Michael Sherwin, the US attorney in DC who is overseeing the Capitol attack, says in a public appearance that 290 people have been charged so far in connection w/the assault.
That's about 30 or so more than have been filed publicly.
Rather: that have been unsealed thus far...
DC US attorney Sherwin says it's "not true" that most of the Capitol insurrection cases are misdemeanors at this point.
"The bulk of our cases are significant felonies," he says, with potential sentences of 5, 10, 20 years.
Michael Sherwin, the US atty in DC who is overseeing the Capitol attack, notes that American domestic terrorists have joined forces (as others have noted) w/international groups in a "global community of extremism."
Prosecutors have unsealed new charges against Luke Coffee of Dallas, accusing him of attacking cops at the Capitol with a crutch.
Officer body cams have provided lots of footage of Coffee advancing on the police and swinging the crutch as "a blunt object weapon," prosecutors say.
Oops.
When Anna Morgan-Lloyd went to her local sheriff's office for a gun permit, an employee recognized her from her Facebook postings as someone who had stormed the Capitol last month.
The sheriff's office turned her and her friend, Dona Sue Bissey, in to the FBI.
"Best day ever," Morgan-Bissey later wrote on FB. "We stormed the capital (sic) building me and Dona Bissey were in the first people 50 people in.
Bissey, owner of the Hothead Salon, implicated herself in her own FB posts.
Prosecutors have filed new charges saying Daniel Caldwell of Texas sprayed a chemical irritant at about 15 cops at the Capitol. A witness later ID'd him as a regular player in Airsoft, a military simulation game using plastic projectiles.
The witness who played the military simulation game w/Caldwell said he was a "huge white supremacist" and "a complete wacko."
Caldwell, the witness said, liked to bring REAL weapons to the mil-sim and had to reminded several times to put them back in his vehicle.
"There's got to be something we can use against these fucking scumbags," Christopher Moynihan said while rifling through documents on the Senate floor.
Charges, naturally, followed.
Oath Keeper Jessica Watkins, charged with 8 other militia members in the Capitol attack, wants to address the court at her bail hearing in DC. She may speak for the first time publicly in a moment or two.
Watkins says that she has disbanded her local Ohio militia, adding that she's also canceling her Oath Keeper membership.
"I did it for the love of my country," Watkins says, referring to Jan. 6, "but it's time to let that go."
She says she wants to focus on her business--a bar in Ohio--adding that she's "humiliated" to even be in court today.
DECISION: Federal judge orders Oath Keeper Jessica Watkins charged w/conspiracy in the Capitol attack to remain in custody pending her trial.
The judge, Amit Mehta, says most disturbing aspect of case was the OK's plan to have a quick reaction force w/weapons ready to go Jan 6.
Prosecutors are out with a new indictment wrapping up the members of the Proud Boys' Kansas City chapter who were previously charged by complaint.
"Manner and Means of the Conspiracy" as alleged against members of the Kansas City chapter of the Proud Boys.
John S. Anderson was in the crowd that breached a tunnel under the Capitol on Jan. 6, prosecutors say.
After chemical irritants were sprayed and space got tight, Anderson, possibly collapsing, told the cops that he..."can't breathe."
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Interesting: Judge Cannon has told the defense and govt to file proposed jury instructions defining the terms of the Espionage Act disputed at last week's motions hearing and narrowing the Presidential Records Act claim by April 2.
That suggests...
at least in theory that she is intending to take Trump's classified documents case to trial.
It would seem (?) like a waste of time to ask the parties to define for the jury the disputed elements of the Espionage Act--i.e. the law's requirement that the govt prove Trump had "unauthorized possession" of docs related to "national defense"--if she wasn't picturing a trial.
JUST IN: Alexander Smirnov told the feds during an interview after is arrest that "officials associated with Russian intelligence" were involved in passing a story about Hunter Biden.
Smirnov also reported to the feds having contacts w/some pretty shady Russians including one connected to what seems like an assassination crew and an intel guy.
Now: The first Trump documents hearing in front of Judge Cannon in Florida has ended w/o a decision on the trial schedule. Cannon seemed skeptical of the govt’s request to go to trial in December but also seemed disinclined to let the trial stray until after the 2024 election.
Cannon pressed Trump’s lawyer if they wanted to delay the trial after voting and they affirmed they did. They said if a trial date must be set it should be for mid-Nov 2024.
Cannon said she would file a written order promptly.
Beneath the scheduling issues was a fascinating philosophical discussion of the nature of Trump as defendant. It revolved around the question of should Trump be treated like any other defendant or did his role as candidate need to be taken into account .
Now: DOJ responds, glancingly, to the uproar over the Jacob Chansley footage, clarifying that the images of him w/the police took place *after* he illegally entered the Senate gallery--the behavior that triggered his obstruction of Congress charge.
By glancingly, I mean prosecutors responded to the complaints of another defendant, Dominic Pezzola of the Proud Boys, about the footage, and clarified their position on the new video.
"In sum," prosecutors wrote, "Chansley was not some passive, chaperoned observer of events for the roughly hour that he was unlawfully inside the Capitol."
We've just received more information about the tantalizing FBI data snafu that temporarily paused the Proud Boys sedition trial late week for an evidentiary
A quick thread.
Background: The dispute concerns a log of internal FBI chats from one of the case agents, Nicole Miller. The log was given to the defense for impeachment of her testimony. Miller minimized or hid responses from other agents since, govt says, they were outside scope of cross-ex.
But the defense found the minimizations & opened them up. The newly opened messages had some tantalizing things from another agent who was writing to Miller. There were also some places where Miller's responses to that agent appeared to be missing.
Update: Prosecutors have told the judge in the Proud Boys sedition case that the Jencks issue may have been a result of a "spill" of classified information.
No one seems to know exactly what that means at this point.
Jocelyn Ballentine, the prosecutor who oversees the J6 conspiracy cases, tells Judge Kelly that the spreadsheet of internal FBI comms at issue here contained classified messages from "one other agent who does clandestine work" but who did not take part in the Proud Boys case.
The Proud Boys trial data issue is threatening to spin off into true chaos.
Norm Pattis, lawyer for Joe Biggs, is calling for the appointment of a special master to examine the spreadsheet of internal FBI comms to check for any classified messages.
(Gonna say that's unlikely...)