Prosecutors Drop All Remaining Charges Against Inauguration Day Rioters
“jurors told reporters they were unable to unanimously reach guilty verdicts”
The far left rioters who acted out on Trump’s inauguration day have gotten a very lucky break. They’re getting away with all the bad behavior millions of Americans witnessed on TV and the internet. There will be no consequences because all remaining charges have been dropped.
See our prior coverage:
- Six Inauguration Day ‘Protestors’ Found Not Guilty On All Charges
- Prosecutors Drop Charges Against 129 Inauguration Day Rioters
- More Cases Dismissed by Prosecutors for Inauguration Day Riots
It’s all over now.
Keith L. Alexander of the Los Angeles Times reports:
Federal prosecutors dismiss all remaining Inauguration Day rioting cases
Federal prosecutors on Friday said they would dismiss rioting charges against all remaining defendants arrested after destructive Inauguration Day protests, bringing to a close a controversial case that led to allegations of government overreach.
Prosecutors began filing paperwork Friday afternoon to formally drop the cases against 38 people who had been awaiting trial.
The vandalism of downtown businesses on the day President Trump was sworn in stretched over 16 blocks as part of a disturbance called DisruptJ20. Members of a large group of protesters set small fires and used bricks and crowbars to smash storefronts.
In all, 234 people were arrested and charged with rioting. Of them, 21 defendants pleaded guilty before trial. But prosecutors had been unable to secure convictions at trial against others in the group…
At a second trial involving another handful of defendants, jurors either acquitted the defendants or were unable to reach a unanimous verdict. Over time, prosecutors dismissed more of the cases.
Following the two trials, jurors told reporters they were unable to unanimously reach guilty verdicts because they weren’t convinced the defendants participated in vandalism. In some instances, prosecutors showed video they said showed some of those arrested smashing windows. But jurors said the images were not clear enough to know for sure.
Andrew Blake of the Washington Times has more:
“Obviously it’s a huge relief to have these charges dropped after an 18-month nightmare,” said defendant Michael Webermann. “However, it’s hard not to feel cynical about the enormous amount of power that prosecutors have to overcharge people, disrupt their lives, and then drop cases before having to face any consequences in court,” he told the Huffington Post.
Only one of the 21 people to plead guilty, Dane Powell, has served jail time, The Washington Post reported. He was sentenced last July to four months behind bars after pleading guilty to to rioting and assaulting a police officer.
Zoe Tillman of BuzzFeed has also been following this story:
The dismissals conclude more than a year and a half of litigation over prosecutions that the defendants, their lawyers, and free speech advocates said represented overreach by the government, warning that they would chill First Amendment–protected activity going forward under the Trump administration.
Hopefully, the left will feel the same way about the First Amendment the next time a conservative is supposed to speak at UC Berkeley.
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Comments
For conservatives going through the process of being dragged through court is the punishment.
However when you are a liberal being dragged through court isn’t a punishment but a right of passage! These fuckers will wear there indictments as badges of honour and will most likely to on to commit other crimes in the near future.
Using the rules of society to undermine that same society. Seriously, I could understand this concept as a kid.
You can’t
I’d like to see culture separated from politics. This will make culture stronger. You can’t depend on government for power.
That situation did wonders for early Christianity.
And then Rome co-opted it.
One commen above hit the nail on the head. He was glad charges were dropped but was shocked at the power that the Prosecutors wielded!
That brings to mind the vendetta by prosecutors and the MSM to bring down the Duly Elected President of the United States of America! If you don’t like him don’t vote for him in 2020!….
…as for me! TRUMP/Pence 2020 MAGA
Crime is allowed if you are a Democrat. Clearly Rosenstein went soft. Because any ordinary prosecutor would have asked for another venue.
WHAT? this is the outcome Rosenpenis wanted.
“Obviously it’s a huge relief to have these charges dropped after an 18-month nightmare,” said defendant Michael Webermann. “However, it’s hard not to feel cynical about the enormous amount of power that prosecutors have to overcharge people, disrupt their lives, and then drop cases before having to face any consequences in court,” he told the Huffington Post.
They should ask what he thinks of Manafort being held in solitary confinement BEFORE trial. Or what he thinks of General Flynn being railroaded.
You think anyone should bother? If people think the ends justify the means, then the means are an academic and minor detail.
Response to these clowns rioting should be to drop them in their tracks, bag and tag them. Deploy snipers, have automatic video recording, where when a shot is fired a clip of both an interval of time before the trigger is pulled and an interval after the trigger was pulled. This would document legitimate terminations. When someone is destroying property, assaulting other throwing Molotov cocktails, reasonable to use any measures it is necessary to stop them.
What do the attorneys who frequent this site have to say about JohnSmith’s recommendations?
It’s a mish-mash of nonsense, so it’s largely impossible to respond to his post. There ARE circumstances in which shooting another human being is warranted and lawful, and a riot tends to be rich in those circumstances. But that certainly doesn’t mean everybody at a riot is subject to deadly force.
–Attorney Andrew Branca
http://www.lawofselfdefense.com/patreon
Posts like JohnSmith’s have the potential to cause a lot of trouble for people who support rule of law and the 2nd Amendment. We’re not the only ones who can make videos that show how our opposition is “unhinged”: the Left can do it too.
I( specifically detailed conditions where rioters are putting others at great risk of harm. In the case of violent conduct, terminating those people is justified. I also specified making a video record, in part to stop people who are present from being unjustly shot.
Why don’t you try out what he’s suggesting and see what happens? That way you’ll understand the difference between internet goofball advice and reality.
Yet YOU haven’t done so. Why not?
Huh.
Bravery is cheap on the internet. And blowhards are obvious blowhards.
–Attorney Andrew Branca
http://www.lawofselfdefense.com/patreon
would you care to give your rank and duty position while you were serving at Tiananmen Square in 1989?
you should be retired from the PRC government by now, so it ought to be okay for you to reveal your part in the events there.
Before facing consequences in court? Just what consequences are envisioned for the prosecutors? I am curious.
They didn’t get a lucky break, they got a fixed jury.
JBorque–“just what consequences are envisioned for the prosecutors”? Now that’s an interesting question. Posit first that (A) there was in fact a riot;
(B) cars were set on fire, windows were smashed
No one–not even a progressive-can’t get around those facts. Who was the prosecutor to believe, JBourque or his own lyine eyes when he watched the videos.
The police made the arrests on scene. The prosecutors made the decisions as to who to charge–but first the cops had to catch the villains. And yes–villains is the word.
The prosecutors weren’t looking at a pool of vestal virgins. Okay in front of a lumpenproletariat and largely black group of jurors in DC getting a conviction can be hard. But I don’t see the prosecutors at fault.
The police have kindly made the video and arrest records of people committing crimes available. Now is the time for the insurance companies to file *civil* suits against the criminals responsible (who just got off, and most probably have promptly opened their yap and said incriminating things)and soak them like a fire hose.
Because I believe (not positive) that insurance companies can collect court costs and expenses from claims. So American Family paid $35k to the owner of a torched car and can now file against the torch-ee for upwards of $50k with the price going up as the trial gets closer so don’t you want to settle and we’ll take payments out of your paycheck for the next ten years.
I do find the idea the prosecutors would face sanctions of some sort rather ridiculous. They don’t face consequences in far more serious cases, even if they’d done anything wrong in this instance, which is not a view I support.
Great.
Free to riot again.
This is actually quite bad for Democrats. More will take a chance acting out in the streets.
Anyone remember Nixon ’68 ? I do.
And this is looking like a repeat.
““However, it’s hard not to feel cynical about the enormous amount of power that prosecutors have to overcharge people, disrupt their lives, and then drop cases before having to face any consequences in court,” he told the Huffington Post.”
The six Baltimore police officers prosecuted by Marilyn Mosby over the death of Freddie Gray, in a case in which there was literally zero evidence inconsistent with innocence, would agree. So would George Zimmerman, prosecuted by Angela Corey, in another case where there was no evidence inconsistent with innocence, for no other reason, in my informed opinion, than to improve her re-election prospects (and it worked).
–Attorney Andrew F. Branca
http://www.lawofselfdefense.com/patreon
I wonder whatever happened to the old “Let’s make an example of them”? That used to be the way we discouraged people from doing the same thing over and over. Now the feeling among the street dirt will be that “They won’t prosecute us so let’s burn it down”.
They’ve gotten away with riot and destruction of property this time. What’s next – robbery, assault…? And what will happen if one of their intended victims says “No more!” and acts accordingly?
Whatever is free, you get more of. We will get more of the assaults and domestic terrorism, , because law-enforcement is not holding the offenders to account.
We have seen this act before. BLM was full of rioting, and they got away with it. This is more of the same. We used to have juries that had more trust in the police, but since having a President who frequently called out the police, and was at least indirectly responsible for the deaths of a number of police, we will see more of the same.
The left wants a civil war, they want to see this country destroyed so it can be rebuilt into their version of utopia, a socialist state. We’ve seen this act before too.
People have become too complacent, too permissive in any aberrant behavior, and too trusting of government infringement on true rights rather than made up ones. We have devalued life, demeaned males, demeaned our history, demeaned white people. We have allowed PC to become so invasive in our lives that it is a form of thought control, which reshapes our thoughts and beliefs.
When was the last time you didn’t hear some Republican being called Hitler, or Republicans in power not being called Nazis, this despite them coming from the left moreso than the right. So, letting these rioters go is a reflection of the jurists believing the rioters were correct to riot, and claimed being blind and deaf to testimony. The cause was just, so thugs become some odd heroes to them. I hope someday they don’t come to regret allowing criminal behavior to go unpunished, for it only begets more criminal behavior. And that behavior always escalates.
Civilization requires that its members agree to and uphold all of the rules. When members do not agree to nor uphold the rules of civilization, then there is no civilization.
Currently, it seems as if our government seeks to use pure force to manage a herd rather than support a civilization.
An alternative would require the removal of the uncivilized, but that, alas, seems to be too difficult to accomplish.
Just another milestone on the road to Civil War 2.
Not a smidgeon of guilt.
Seems like a change of venue was in order. The Blue Corridor of Evil is so strong in this area, hard to see how this was ever going to work.
Simple. The jury was loaded with communist and they used jury nullification to let their scumbag buddies off the hook. Not to worry, their day is coming soon.
Given the verdict or lack thereof, it sounds like the same kind of jury that sat for the O J Simpson trial.
These folks are going to regret bending over for these anarchists and it will be they who sustain “No Justice, No Peace.”
When prosecutors drop charges of even those who’ve plead guilty, it’s further proof of corruption in the ranks.