Last night, Judge Emmett Sullivan ordered pretrial detention for Jack Whitton who is charged w/serious attacks on at least three cops in the Capitol's lower west terrace. The ruling proves--yet again--that the mob assault on the building was exceedingly violent.
Newly charged Capitol riot suspect, Anthony Antonio, of Naperville, Ill., was wearing what looks like a Three Percenter patch while in the mob at the Lower West Terrace, court papers show.
Capitol rioter Ronnie Sandlin (below left) seemed like a mere stoner at the time of his arrest. But according to a newly unsealed search warrant affidavit, he believed in the boogaloo--or a racially-driven civil war.
The FBI found messages he shared w/co-defendant Josiah Colt.
On the other hand, Sandlin and Colt (aka the Senate Dangler), not only discussed their plans for 1/6 in a TGI Friday's, the FBI says. They also took videos of themselves doing it.
A prosecutor at a bail hearing for Proud Boy Charles Donohoe just said a 3rd defendant has been added to the Proud Boy case of Dominic Pezzola & William Pepe.
He also said that Daniel Scott aka Milkshake is an unindicted Proud Boy co-conspirator.
There doesn't seem to be a record of the new Proud Boy defendant.
"Milkshake" is the Proud Boy who is heard to say "Let's take the Capitol!" before a mob of Proud Boys & supporters moves toward the building.
AUSA Jason McCullough said the feds are still assessing his culpability.
Govt reveals a new Telegram message sent by Proud Boy leader Charles Donohoe at today's hearing:
"Facial recognition don't mean shit when you've got .556 green tip."
That's said to be a reference to armor piercing ammo.
Donohoe's lawyer is saying that the mob of Proud Boys marching on the Capitol engaged in "horseplay" along the way. Eddie Brock, the group's videographer, was calling out to girls, the lawyer says. Etc.
NEW: Prosecutors add Matthew Greene of Syracuse to one of the Proud Boy conspiracy cases. Greene is accused of having worked with fellow NYers Dominic Pezzola & William Pepe to overcome officers at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Greene, said to be a 1st degree Proud Boy, was with Pezzola & Pepe in the early wave of rioters to enter the building, prosecutors say. Like Pezzola, he is said to have worn an earpiece radio to communicate with other Proud Boys.
DECISION: Federal judge orders NC Proud Boy leader Charles Donohoe detained pretrial.
Two of Donohoe's co-defendants, Joe Biggs & Ethan Nordean, have been also been detained. The four Proud Boy leader, Zach Rehl, has a bond hearing early next month.
Interesting. In a new--and fairly murky--court filing, prosecutors have given a hint about what Oath Keeper cooperator Jon Schaffer may know about other members of the group.
Jailed Proud Boy leader Ethan Nordean is getting Chapo Guzman levels of restrictions while in pre-trial custody, according to his lawyers.
When the Capitol police stopped Jacob Travis Clark inside the building, prosecutors said, they told him they were just doing their jobs.
"So were the Nazis!" Clark responded, according to his criminal complaint. "Stand down!"
The FBI had only grainy police body cam footage of Kevin Galetto assaulting cops at the Capitol. Needing more, they got surveillance shots of him at a garage sale at his home in California.
Capitol Hill rioter Rachel Powell, aka Bullhorn Lady, didn't mean to mock a federal judge by wearing a mesh mask to work instead of a real one as he ordered her to.
According to her lawyer, the mask was merely an homage to Lana Del Ray.
The government says that Richard "Bigo" Barnett left Nancy Pelosi a note on her desk during the Capitol riot calling her a bitch.
False, Barnett's lawyers say in a new court filing.
Bigo called Pelosi a "biatch," they claim, which "is a slang and less offensive word."
You decide: "Bitch" or "biatch"?
A decision may be reached at a detention hearing for Barnett scheduled for tomorrow.
After 1/6, Syracuse Proud Boy Matthew Greene ordered a small arsenal of 1,000+ rounds of AR-15 & AK-47 ammo plus a gas mask, prosecutors are saying at a bail hearing for Greene. They also say Greene complained that the upstate NY Proud Boy chapter had "a rat" in their ranks.
The government has started plea negotiations with Richard "Bigo" Barnett, the Capitol Hill rioter who put his feet up on a desk in Nancy Pelosi's office, a prosecutor just said at a hearing.
DECISION: Judge Chris Cooper says the idea that the events of Jan. 6 were peaceful protest are "absurd"--"It was deadly serious."
That said, he orders the release of Richard "Bigo" Barnett who's been locked up since his arrest in January after breaking into Nancy Pelosi's office.
Barnett's release was largely a foregone conclusion under the DC Circuit's ruling in Munchel which drew bright lines between defendants who broke things, hurt people, planned in advance w/others & those who basically walked into the building on 1/6 and present no ongoing threat.
After winning the detention of Syracuse Proud Boy Matthew Greene at a hearing on Monday, prosecutors have released some of the photos they used as evidence. The pics show Greene outside the Capitol w/co-conspirator and fellow Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola (and others.)
More evidence that lots of plea deals are coming in the Capitol Hill riot cases: a prosecutor just said at a hearing that plea offers will be going out soon, including in the case of Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, the white supremacist who urged on the mob on Jan. 6.
The judge in Hale-Cusanelli's case, Trevor McFadden, ordered him to remain in custody meanwhile, ruling that his actions on 1/6, plus his virulently racist views (and some actions) merited detention.
On CNN last night Officer Michael Fanone said he'd only seen combat of the sort that took place at the Capitol in the movies before.
Today, prosecutors sought to detain David Judd saying he was part of a mob that used a variety of weapons--including firecrackers--to attack cops.
Texas man Guy Reffitt wore padding in his pants & shirt while storming the Capitol on 1/6, prosecutors said in a new filing, negating the effects of the pepper balls that police officers used to repel him.
Who knew?
Prosecutors also say they now have a 90+ minute Zoom recording of Reffitt talking to other members of the 3%'er militia discussing talk b4 the assault on the Capitol.
"I don’t care if Pelosi’s head is hitting every step while I drag her by her ankles–she’s coming out,” he said.
In the Zoom call, prosecutors say, Reffitt laid out a plan to attack “mainstream media,” “Silicon Valley” and “Big Tech.”
He specifically mentioned how a Texas social media company's backup generators "could be disabled w/ properly placed gunshots from a sniper’s rifle."
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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...)