At a hearing for Capitol defendant Michael Foy (charged with attacking cops with a hockey stick) Judge Tanya Chutkan expressed concern about what she’s heard about the conditions of confinement in D.C. jail.
Judge Chutkan said she understands the government is "prosecuting a mass crime” but she’s particularly concerned about Foy’s pretrial detention because he’s the only Capitol defendant she has who doesn’t have a prior record but is being held pretrial.
In a filing late last night, Foy’s team said trial "is nowhere in sight” and Foy is being held "effectively in harsh solitary confinement” conditions that have been described as a "grave human rights abuse.” courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
Judge Chutkan said she doesn’t want "boilerplate” from the gov about how massive the Capitol investigation is in their argument for Foy’s detention, and said she’d “look very favorably upon setting conditions of release” at the next hearing unless gov makes progress on discovery.
“Trials are going to resume in the coming months,” says Judge Chutkan. If there’s going to be a plea offer made, the judge says, that should happen soon.
Judge wrote that Randolph had a "mostly law-abiding past” but engaged "in an egregious, injurious, and felonious assault on a federal law enforcement officer as part of a broader effort to disrupt the democratic process of the United States government.” documentcloud.org/documents/2069…
Randolph’s conduct, the judge wrote “shocks the conscious.” After Randolph knocked over the Capitol Police officer and caused her to hit her head on a metal stair handrail, he went on to assault more officers and left her an “unconscious heap on the ground.”
Really making some federal prosecutor’s pretrial detention memo pretty easy here. Beginning to suspect some of these Capitol defendants haven’t read the Muncel decision! (h/t @SandySkipper1)
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press urges Attorney General Merrick Garland to “make the treatment of the press an essential part” of any policing practices probes. rcfp.org/wp-content/upl…
DOJ’s consent decree with Ferguson put some media protections in place, requiring at minimum supervisor approval before officers made "any arrest of any member of the media, whether formally credentialed or not, including citizen-journalists and live-streamers.”
Superseding indictment makes it explicit: "The defendants engaged in domestic terrorism, as defined at Title 18, United States Code, Section 2331.” justice.gov/usao-dc/press-…
“The department is very judicious about deploying the term in the first instance, and typically will only do so in the backend of litigation when the facts and circumstances are going to be clear.” huffpost.com/entry/white-te…
“In many instances, the government is going to be constrained, to a certain degree, from stepping in front of a podium and saying, ‘Ladies and gentleman, we’re revealing domestic terrorism here.’” huffpost.com/entry/white-te…
On CNN, DC Police Officer Mike Fanone said it’s a miracle that there wasn’t a higher body count on Jan. 6, and that he’d only seen combat that brutal on a mass scale in the movies.
Think this is a new one. They had a deportation officer with ICE (who is on a FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force) question a Capitol defendant who wore a "GOD, GUNS & TRUMP” sweatshirt to the insurrection.
Jeffrey Register gave up the goods pretty quickly here, helpfully knocking out elements. He self-surrendered in Jacksonville today, per DOJ. justice.gov/usao-dc/case-m…
Seen a lot of Capitol case affiants, but think ICE deportation officer may be a new one.
Although it’s really Google that did most of the work here.