A Second Look At The Charges Against The January 6th Defendants

On Tuesday, Red State reported on a reevaluation of the charges that were used to keep the January 6th protestors in jail for four years.

The article reports:

On Monday, the Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin, announced that his office would undertake a review of the decision-making that led to the charging of hundreds of January 6 protesters with “obstructing Congress” in violation of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1512(c). That was a statute passed by Congress in 2005 to address an alleged hole revealed in an obstruction of justice statute criminalizing the destruction of records, documents, materials, etc., to obstruct an investigation. The “hole” was the fact that the language of the existing statute made it a crime to direct third parties to undertake such obstructive acts, but it did not – by its plain language – make it a criminal act to take such action yourself.

This was the finding of the Supreme Court in Arthur Andersen v. United States, an infamous case related to the Enron scandal where then-U.S. Attorney Andrew Weissmann put one of the “Big 5” accounting firms out of business – costing maybe 80,000 Arthur Andersen employees their jobs – only to eventually be reversed by the Supreme Court in a 9-0 decision.

The crime that Arthur Andersen supposedly committed? It followed its internal policy for destroying client records – Enron in this case – before it received a federal grand jury subpoena for those records as part of the probe into Enron’s accounting practices. Arthur Andersen was charged under Sec. 1512(b)(2) – there was no subsection (c) at that time – which made it a crime to “knowingly [and] … corruptly persuade another person … with intent to … cause” that person to “withhold” or “alter” documents intended for use in an “official proceeding.”

The article concludes:

What is also significant about each of the cases listed above is that the convictions in each case were affirmed by the federal Appeals Court — just like Joseph Fischer’s conviction was affirmed — before the convictions were reversed by the Supreme Court, and those reversals were unanimous in almost every case.

This unbroken line of decisions by the Supreme Court should have been warning enough to Biden DOJ prosecutors who decided to charge hundreds of January 6 protesters with a felony using a novel legal theory under a new statute.

Some involved in making that decision may now pay a price for having done with their jobs – and rightly so.

Please click on the link above for further details. Someone needs to be held accountable for violating the civil rights of the January 6th prisoners.

Who Is Pulling The Strings?

On January 21st, PJ Media reported the following:

One of Donald Trump’s first acts as president was to commute the sentences of or pardon nearly every single Jan. 6 prisoner, setting them all free. But multiple prisons and halfway houses have resisted complying, with the D.C. gulag holding multiple prisoners hostage and refusing to release them.

Trump’s historic order commuted the sentences of about a dozen individuals and pardoned “all individuals convicted of offenses related to event that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.” It ordered that those “currently held in prison are released immediately.” But the thugs who have so abused and trampled the rights of the J6ers under the Biden-Harris administration for four years are defying the law one last time. J6ers and friends reported prisons and halfway houses across America slow-rolling prisoners’ releases, and the infamous Washington, D.C., jail nicknamed the Gulag flat out refused to release multiple J6 hostages.

Even Elon Musk responded to families’ pleas, resharing a message urging them to bring Trump‘s pardon with them to the prison and requesting to be notified if they continued to encounter resistance in the release of their loved ones.

One prisoner reported on the events:

Early Tuesday morning, Lang (Jake Lang) posted an update: “Hey @elonmusk they are STILL HOLDING me & 20 other J6 Political Prisoners hostage inside the Washington DC Jail Gulag & WONT LET US LEAVE!!!” He reiterated the accusation of assault. “I was swarmed & assaulted by prison officials including Lt. Allen & his Emergency Response Team (ERT) Thugs last night while sitting all packed up to leave!!!! Our were families are standing outside in below freezing 10° weather until 1am when they released 2 hostages, there are still 20 of us in here!!! [sic]”

The article concludes:

This is completely unacceptable and illegal. Prison authorities are openly defying presidential pardons and orders. This is one more disgusting and shameful illustration of how abusive, dishonest, biased, and vindictive our prison system is in America now. Biden pardoned or commuted the sentences of literal murderers, Chinese spies, and pedophiles, but when Trump pardons innocent patriots, the jails hold them hostage.

All those involved in preventing the release need to be charged with a crime and arrested.

Hiding The Evidence The Defendants Needed

On Wednesday, The New York Post posted an article about the unconstitutional treatment of the January 6th prisoners.

The article notes:

For more than two years, the surveillance footage from the 2021 Capitol riot, aired this week by Tucker Carlson, was kept from the American public by a Democratic Congress so a false narrative became cemented in the public consciousness.

For more than two years, footage that could have exonerated Jan. 6 defendants was kept from their legal teams.

People are in prison because of that cover-up.

Take the footage aired by Carlson Monday night of so-called “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley being escorted around the Capitol by police officers who help him open the door and enter the empty Senate chamber.

It is hard to reconcile these calm and even cordial scenes with the nearly four-year prison sentence Chansley now is serving for “obstructing an official proceeding.”

Contrary to what apologists have been saying since Carlson began airing the footage, all this material has not previously been made available to the J6 defendants, some of whom have been jailed without trial for two years, in violation of their constitutional right to a fair and speedy trial.

Jacob Chanley’s lawyer has publicly stated that this footage was not made available either to him or to the judge.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It’s time to release the January 6th prisoners and put those who perpetrated the lie in jail.

The article concludes:

The Capitol riot was a gift to Democrats and Trump-deranged Republicans. They didn’t care about the perversion of justice or the human toll of their political game.

If this were happening in an authoritarian overseas country, the State Department would rightly decry the injustice.

The shabby treatment of the J6 defendants is a stain on this country’s reputation that has not gone unnoticed around the world.

Equal Justice Under The Law?

CBS News reported the following on Wednesday:

Jussie Smollett walked out of a Chicago prison on Wednesday night. An appeals court earlier cleared the way for his release, ordering the actor be released from jail after posting a personal recognizance bond of $150,000, and pending the appeal of his conviction for lying to police about a racist and homophobic attack.

…Smollett’s attorneys had argued that he would have completed the sentence by the time the appeal process was completed and that Smollett could be in danger of physical harm if he remained in jail.

…He (Smollett defense attorney Nenye Uche) criticized the special prosecutor’s decision to charge Smollett again after the initial charges were dropped by Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and he paid a fine. He also called Judge James Linn’s sentence excessive for a low-level felony, adding that the appellate court doesn’t “play politics.”

“The real question is: Should Black men be walked into jail for a class 4 felony? Shame on you if you think they should,” Uche said.

The office of the special prosecutor called the claim that Smollett’s health and safety were at risk “factually incorrect,” in a response to his motion, noting that Smollett was being held in protective custody at the jail.

I hate to be difficult (but I am good at it), but what difference does it make that Jussie Smollett is black? What is the normal sentence for a class 4 felony? The color of the person who committed the crime should have absolutely no bearing on the sentence!

Now let’s contrast this event with another recent event.

On March 7th, Red State reported the following:

You don’t see this very often in federal court, but one of the January 6 (J6) Defendants, Lucas Denney, is being held illegally. He was arrested in Texas on December 13, 2021, and brought before a federal magistrate, who ordered him detained without bond on a criminal Complaint. It then took six weeks to transfer him to DC, where he is currently being held. He has not appeared before a federal judge in DC since his arrival, although that will change Monday afternoon as a result of his lawyer seeking his release.

The article at Red State concludes:

And Denney’s case shows that apparently no one at DOJ, either at the U.S. Attorneys’ Office in D.C., at Main Justice, or in the U.S. Marshal’s Service, is paying attention to (or better yet tracking) these outside-of-D.C. pre-trial detention cases to ensure that the detainees are receiving all of the due process protections to which they are entitled and that the constitutional and statutory deadlines are met. Since it is the DOJ J6 prosecution team that is ordering arrests (instead of voluntary surrenders) and demanding detentions and transfers (instead of seeking reasonable conditions for pre-trial release), the failure to comply with the Constitution, the criminal code, and the Rules of Criminal Procedure rests entirely at the feet of the DOJ.

The operative principles and rules for these early proceedings in criminal cases are not obscure, complex, or ambiguous. Competent prosecutors have no excuse for not knowing that Rule 5 requires that the Preliminary Hearing take place in the district where the Initial Appearance occurs, that it must be held within 14 days of that Initial Appearance, that there is no such thing as two “Initial Appearances,” and that the Speedy Trial Act requires an indictment to be filed within 30 days of arrest.

The entire episode is an unmitigated disgrace.

We have become a banana republic.

The Truth About The Jail

On Tuesday, PJ Media posted an article with a link to Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s report on the conditions in the Washington, D.C., jail where the prisoners taken on January 6th are housed.

The article reports:

The political prisoners cheered as they met  (Representatives) Gohmert and Greene. Some cried and all were visibly shaken (they were the only inmates on the tour to cry). They lined up to shake hands with Greene and Gohmert and began chanting “U-S-A! U-S-A!”

Takeaways from Greene’s report include:

    • Inmates claim they aren’t allowed to see their lawyers or family members
    • They aren’t allowed to get a haircut unless they are vaccinated. Some use Nair hair remover on their heads. Some keep their hair long.
    • Some of the J6 political prisoners claimed their cells were infested with rats and bedbugs when they first arrived.
    • They claimed the U.S. Marshals Service came through several days before the Green-Gohmert visit to paint and scrub dirt and mold from the showers. There were still visible signs of dirt and mold in the shower section.
    • One inmate told Greene his toilet doesn’t work. He has to wait until he is let out of his cell to use a restroom.
    • The inmates aren’t allowed to attend religious services so they hold their own.
    • Several inmates need medical attention. One has a broken finger. A seventy-one-year-old inmate, Lonnie Leroy Coffman, who hasn’t seen a doctor, watched as his lower forearm has turned purple and his thumb turned black. The other inmates suggested that if anyone can be released, it should be Lonnie.

Please follow the link to the article and the link to the 28-page report on the visit to the prison.

The article notes the beginning of the conclusion to Representative Greene’s report:

The congressional visit to the D.C. jail on November 4 unquestionably proved that there is a twotrack justice system in the United States. This two-tiered system is not based on race, violence, or conviction of crime, but politics.

Some of our government officials need to be sued and put in prison.