How to Turn a Q-Anon Backer Into a Peace Lover

me do it defense. Yes, the Capitol, take the cabal the capoy right now. Yeah. The Just Security blog has together footage of many videos from within the crowd showing the reaction to Trump's speech before the attack on the Capitol. Could it provide support for a defense that the rioters

acted in response to Trump's violent rhetoric? Joining me as Bloomberg Legal reporter David Yaffee beleny, So, David, there was a man who was easily identifiable and stood out from the very beginning because he was half naked and wearing some kind of Viking head dress with horns. But his lawyer is now saying he's a peace loving yoga enthusiast whose hero is Mahatma Gandhi. Yes, so that's Jacob Chansley, who's better known probably as the q and On Shaman.

He's an adherent of the Q and On a conspiracy theory and and a sort of leader in that world who shown up at a lot of far right protests over the last few months. And yes, he showed up at the riot dress and a horned coyote skin head dress with an air middriff covered with tattoos, and he was photographed Danny at the day is that Mike Tense had deserted just moments earlier in the Senate chamber, and so that image of him became one of the defining

images of the riot, especially in the early days. And he in some ways sort of the face of the mob that invaded the capital. So how is his lawyer trying to portray him? Now? His lawyer is now arguing that actually, this guy is a yoga loving, peace loving person whose personal hero is Mohamma Gandhi. You know, you

hear people say, you know, this person wouldn't hurt a fly. Um. The lawyer actually told me that he's heard from several friends of his that rather than killing an insect, he'll he'll pick it up and take it outside and kind of release it back into the wild. But he's that kind of peace loving person. Never mind that he's accused of leaving a threatening note for tense at the Senate days describe the range of charges for the different people involved in the riot. So on the kind of minor end,

you've got just basic trespassing. You know, this person entered a government building when they weren't allowed to, and that includes people like Chancey who are photographed in the Senate chamber, and then people who were maybe at the back of the mob and just kind of followed the crowd inside and who might actually be in the position to argue that they didn't know what they were doing was wrong.

That's kind of on the minor end. On the more serious end, you've got people who are accused of assault of you know, launching a fire extinguisher at a group of police officers, punching police officers, attacking reporters who are based in the capitol healing government operaty. I mean, everybody's seen the photos of one of the defendants out of Johnson carrying off elect turns from Capitol building. There was also a man who was in Nancy Policie's office and

took a letter from a desk. That kind of theft is also being charged. And then members of the far right group that Oathkeepers and have been charged with conspiracy to divert the democratic process. And that's the most serious charge that we've seen, and we're expecting to see more of those in the coming months. We're also expecting a felony murder charge eventually related to death the police officer Brian Sicnik, who is eye as the result of injuries

that he sustained at the Capitol. So we know that law enforcement is going through all these images and video, our defense lawyers doing the same and what are they looking for? Sure? Yeah, defense layers are absolutely doing the same thing. They're pouring through the video footage, news footage, social media code. They're looking for evidence that might be exculpatory,

that might paint their clients in a more positive light. So, for instance, Jacob Chancelly's lawyer told me that he found footage of Chancelly leading a prayer in the Capitol and found footage of him urging other rioters to lead the building and While that might not actually offend the prostitution's case, it could certainly be helpful at the sentencing stage in kind of persuading the judge that, you know, this person was trying to do the right thing when they were

in the building. There's video of rioters in the act of stealing things like the podium you mentioned, smashing windows,

throw things at police. It seems like it would be very hard for a defense attorney to defend a client in the face of video evidence like that, with the job of the defense the pity to come up with a defense for basically anything, But yes, it would be very difficult to argue that somebody who was caught on video smashing a window and then climbing through it didn't realize that it was legal to trust ass or that there was no intent to commit a crime in that action.

I think that's basically an impossible case to argue. So we're gonna be a tough position, and they're probably going to be sense to prison, as they probably should be. But you know, defense players might try the same source of tactics that we've been discussing, sort of creating a narrative around their clients that paints them in a more positive light, you know, puts their actions in context. They

might argue their client is showing remorse. They might try to strike a deal with the prosecutors in which their clients gives information on other people involved in the riot and exchange for some sort of leniency. So there are a range of things that depends players and trying to do. Even in cases where it's totally clear cut that somebody was breaking the law of the Capitol. Yeah, I expect we're going to be seeing a lot of plea deals and co operators. Now, some people plan to use former

President Trump as a defense. How would that work? So this is a legal concept known as the public authority defense, and it's the argument that somebody who was committing a crime was just following orders from a government official. So, you know, a really sort of mundane example of this might be if the mayor of a small town told you to park in a certain place where actually parking was not allowed and got in trouble, you know, you could argue that you were directed by a local government

official to do this. It's obviously a lot more more complicated in the case of the capital riot. That basically the argument would be that Trump when he got up on the stage at the rally before the riot at the Capitol and said fight harder and marched at the Capitol. You know that was an explicit instruction to the protesters who were gathered there to go invade the center of American democracy. That would be the argument sort of the

Trump made me do it defense. The fact that lawyers for writers and Writers themselves are making that claim could actually be helpful with Democrats as they make their case in the impeachment trial where we're Trump has been charged with with incitement of a mob, and so it's not a defense that many legal experts think is a kind of obvious winner, but it's certainly a direction that somebody

lawyers thinking of going in. Has that defense ever worked in a situation analogous to the Capital riot, That's a good question. I actually don't know. Context which is often applied, is you know, somebody doing undercover work for like the CIA or some sort of intelligence gathering operation, and they break the law that they're following orders from higher up in the law enforcement capacity. That's the situation when it

might come into place. One of the people who might be raising that defense is Richard Barnett, who also became one of the poster boys of the riot because of a picture of him sitting at a desk with his feet up in Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office. I wonder how his lawyer will frame the defense. Did Trump make him put his feet up and leave an opscene note for Pelosi?

It seems pretty far fetched. Yes, on one level, does seem far fetched because obviously Trump didn't get up there and lay out the specific things that these people are accused of doing and say do those things. But I think defense lawyers would argue these are people who thought that they were doing the president's bidding, that the election has been stolen, and that the president of the US, who has access to the Capitol, had told them to

go inside and cause some trouble. And again, I think this is unlikely to lead to acquittal, but this is a factor that at the sentence stage could play a role and be helpful for some of these people. I found it fascinating that Barnett's bail hearing went on for something like five hours and they talked about everything from

him being a kind person to rescuing a Pomeranian. Tell us about that, Yeah, This was a pretty unusual bail hearing that the magistrate in the Arizona who was overseeing it, allowed Barnett's lawyer, Anthony Siano, to call a series of witnesses, including Barnett's longtime partner and her mother and her daughters,

a bunch of friends and acquaintances of Barnett. Basically, if the lawyer is trying to paint a picture of Barnett to counter the narrative in the media that this is this kind of smug guy with its feed up on Pelosi's death, no respect for the democratic process. He was trying to paint Barnett as basically a good person who has a solid family and who's honest and reliable and who the judge could trust to kind of comply with

the terms of bail. And actually Siano was successful in making that case at first, in Barnett was granted bail, he was restricted to stay at home under pretty severe condition.

Kind of a success that this strategy lawyers pursuing. But then prosecutors appealed the ruling to the judge in Washington was ultimately going to be overseeing the case, and that judge blocked it and sent Barnett to jail and Washington while the case received, and some of the defense attorneys are going to try to show their clients didn't have the intent to commit a crime. Basically, all criminal charges require proofs that somebody was intending to commit the crime,

and in most cases that's not hard to show. But in a lot of these rioting cases, you'll have social media footage of somebody kind of milling around in the Capitol rotunda, part of this mob. But if they were at the back of the crowd and they entered through the main doors, which eventually were flung wide open, and the police weren't really doing anything and they just walked in, they might be able to plausibly argue that they did not intend to break the law, They did not realize

they're breaking the law, they were just following a crowd inside. Again, it's unclear whether that will work in the courtroom, and certainly prosecutors might point to things that writers said ahead of time or even said after the riot. I mean, if you were photographed just milling out of the rotunda, then later you posted on Facebook, yeah, we just laid to each The Capitol prosecute as might say, Okay, this person said they were laying siege. It clearly wasn't intent

to rap the laws. So it's not a defense that will obviously work for everybody, but it's something that defense lawyers have in their arsenals there preparing to argue these cases describe the range of charges for the different people involved in the riot. So on the kind of minor end,

you've got just basic trespassing. You know, this person entered a government building when they weren't allowed to, and that includes people like Chancey who are photographed in the Senate chamber, and then people who were maybe at the back of the mob and just kind of follow the crowd inside and who might actually be in the position to argue that they didn't know what they were doing was wrong.

That's kind of on the minor end. On the more serious end, you've got people who are accused of the assault of you know, launching a fire extinguisher at a group of police officers, punching police officers, attacking recorders who are based in the Capitol healing government operaty. I mean, everybody's seen the photos of one of the defendants out of Johnson carrying off a left turn from the Capital building um. There was also a man who is in anc Policie's office and took a letter from the death

That kind of theft is also being charged. And then members of the far right group that Oathkeepers have been charged with conspiracy to subvert the democratic process, and that's the most serious charge that we've seen, and we're expecting to see more of those in the coming months. We're also expecting a felony murder charge eventually related to death the police officer Brian Sicknik, who has died as a result of injuries that be sustained at accountable Prosecutors are

saying that they may upgrade the charges as time goes on. Yes, they said that. I mean, it's not clear who has already been charged might later be charged with something like that, or whether there are people that we don't know about yet who they're investigating and might end up charging with conspiracy or subedition. But because certainly the direction that the investigation is heading kind of away from these sort of serious but not the most serious offenses to major investigations

into whether this riot was coordinated ahead of times. There were serious planning involved between all right militia groups across different states to pull us off. So the FBI estimates that roughly eight hundred people entered the building. Apparently they're debating within the Justice Department and law enforcement whether to charge people with unlawful entry, who, as you've described, just sort of we're part of the crowd and there's no

evidence that they did anything else. Yeah, there have been reports that there's kind of internal debate at main Justice, at the U. S Attorney's Office in Washington, which is leading the investigation, over whether they charge everyone. You've got hundreds of people, some of them were hardly doing anything even if they were in there. Others were attacking reporters and police officers. So you know where does it makes sense to focus your prosecutorial energies, given that you don't

want to overwhelm the court system. So there have been reports of that. UM, I would say Michael Sherwin, the acting US Attorney in Washington, UM talked to reporters this week and basically rebutted some of those reports, saying, if you committed a crime, doesn't matter how minor it was, We're going to come after you. UM. So he was certainly making the case that there's no debate. We have total faith in the abilities of the local court system in Washington to handle the surge of cases, and we're

going to arrest so many people as we can. UM. With that said, you know, there are probably some people who for whatever reason, will never be identified. You know, they happened not to have shown up in the video footage. They were wearing a face mask and a and a hat or something, and they just couldn't be identified. I mean, the two people have been charged so far out of out of eight hundred, you know, that's only only a

quarter of the rioters. UM. And you know, one would think that there's a you know, a not inconsiderable proportion of the people who are in the capital will just never be identified. Have you heard any time frames as to how long it might take the FBI and the

Justice Department to find and charge these people? The yeah, they have to on in the just Forment have been pretty clear that, um, this could be a month long investigation, especially as they start building these more complicated cases against uh people who may have planned some sort of assault

ahead of time. It just takes a lot longer. I mean, it's very easy to see a photo of Jacob Chansley wearing this head dress on standing at the Senate day, to find them on social media, put together a quick case, and arrest them. That's easy to do, but building these more complicated cases requires traditional tools of law enforce them, like grandjuri subtenas and search warrants. It requires, you know, getting people to talk to you about what somebody might

have been planning ahead of time. People, for the most part, we're not going on Facebook and saying, yeah, I coordinated this with this was of six people across these states during this time frame. That's a much harder case to prove, but it's a sort of more significant and important case than Look, here's some random guy who sort of wandered into the Capitol. So yeah, I think it's going to be months before we see any kind of resolution today. This is gonna be a major priority of the justice

forman for a long time. The siege was a huge embarrassment for law enforcement agencies across the capital, even ones that weren't directly involved in the security for this event, and there's a sense that they need to kind of prove that they're taking it seriously and move as fast and as aggressively as they can. So far, No one has been arrested in connection with the killing of the Capitol police officer, right, Yeah, we don't have a ton

of information on where that investigation stands. Every time we've asked um Michael Sure in the U S. Attorney and officials at the FBI who are involved in that investigation, they've just said it's ongoing. We can't play anything. What we do know is that the officer who died, Brian Sicnik, was hit over the head with a fire extinguisher. He was injured, he sort of made his way back to police headquarters and he ended up dying later. So that's

still under investigation. I mean, any time the cop is killed, that's a you know, a huge priority for law enforce them to figure out what happened. So I'm sure we'll see charges eventually, and the officials who are running investigation have said to expect most likely a colony murder charge in that case. Thanks David. That's Bloomberg Legal reporter David Yaffee Bellini and that's it for the sedition of the

Bloomberg Launch Podcast. I'm June Grosso. Thanks so much for listening, and remember you can always get the latest legal news on our Bloomberg Launch podcast. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your favorite podcasts. You're listening to Bloomberg. Yeah,