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Federal prosecutors who initially said there was “strong evidence” that the pro-Trump mob that stormed the United States Capitol last week aimed to “capture and murder elected officials” withdrew from the indictment after the head of the investigation warned on Friday that the investigation is still pending in its early stages and there was no “direct evidence” of such intentions.
The indictment came in a court filing filed by prosecutors Thursday night (local time) in Phoenix in the case against Jacob Chansley, the Arizona man who participated in the uprising while wearing face paint, shirtless and a furry hat. With horns.
“Strong evidence, including Chansley’s own words and actions on Capitol Hill, supports that the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and assassinate elected officials of the United States government,” a prosecutor wrote in a memo urging the judge to keep Chansley behind bars. But at a hearing for Chansley later that day in Phoenix, another prosecutor, Todd Allison, broke the memo line.
Allison said the statement could end up being appropriate in Chansley’s trial, but said prosecutors did not want to mislead the court and did not have to rely on the statement to argue that he should remain in jail. In the end, a judge on Friday ordered Chansley to be jailed pending his trial.
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Earlier on Friday, Michael Sherwin, acting US attorney for the District of Columbia, retracted the murder charges, saying they “have no direct evidence at this time of catch-and-kill teams.”
Sherwin said there appears to have been confusion among some prosecutors, in part due to the complexity of the investigation and the number of people involved. Prosecutors raised a similar outlook Thursday in the case of a former Air Force officer who they said was wearing zip-lock plastic handcuffs because he intended to “take hostages.”
Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP
In this Jan.6 photo, Donald Trump supporters are confronted by Capitol police officers outside the Senate Chamber inside the Capitol in Washington.
The extensive investigation involves multiple cities and jurisdictions, in part because many of the rioters simply went home; only 13 were arrested in the moments after the cleaning of the building.
The FBI has been investigating whether any of the rioters had conspired to kidnap members of Congress and hold them hostage, focusing particularly on the men seen wearing zip-lock plastic handcuffs and pepper spray.
Although the murder claim of the court filing was rejected by prosecutors, prosecutors did not retract the statement that Chansley, taking the stand where Vice President Mike Pence had been presiding moments before, wrote a threatening note to Pence that said : “It’s only a matter of time, justice is coming.”
Pence and the congressional leaders had been removed from the chamber by the Secret Service and the United States Capitol Police shortly before the rioters stormed the room.
Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP
Jacob Anthony Chansley, the face-painted Arizona man wearing a horned fur hat, was arrested and charged with charges including trespassing and disorderly conduct on the Capitol grounds.
Chansley’s attorney, Gerald Williams, said he has not seen any images of his client engaging in dangerous conduct while on Capitol Hill. “He was just there acting as a protester,” Williams said, noting that his client has no criminal record and agreed to speak with investigators.
Allison said Chansley was proud of his actions on the day of the insurrection and wanted to go to Washington for Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday. Allison described Chansley as someone who believes in conspiracy theories and “is not connected to reality.”
US Magistrate Judge Deborah Fine, ordering Chansley to be jailed pending trial, concluded that he runs the risk of fleeing and obstructing justice in his case and represents a danger to the community. Echoing the prosecutors’ words, Fine said it was appropriate to say that Chansley was an active participant in a violent insurrection that attempted to overthrow the government.
Fine said Chansley broke through barricades, was among the first people to break into the Capitol building, disobeyed an officer’s orders to leave, refused the officer’s request to use Chansley’s megaphone to tell rioters to leave. the Senate chamber and wrote the note to the vice president.
“Mr. Chansley’s idea of protest is to commit the wrongful acts that we are discussing here,” Fine said.
Chansley, who calls himself the “QAnon Shaman” and has long been a fixture at Trump rallies, was arrested Saturday at the FBI field office in Phoenix.
News photos show him in the riots shirtless, face painted and wearing a horned fur hat, carrying an American flag attached to a wooden pole topped with a spear.
QAnon is a complicated, apocalyptic conspiracy theory spread largely across the internet and promoted by some right-wing extremists.
Chansley told investigators that he arrived at the Capitol “at the request of the president that all ‘patriots’ come to DC on January 6, 2021.” An indictment released Tuesday in Washington charges him with civil disorder, obstruction of official procedure, disorderly conduct in a restricted building and a demonstration in a Capitol building. He has not pleaded guilty to the charges.
More than 80 people face charges stemming from the violence, including more than 40 people in federal court. Dozens more were arrested for violating the curfew that night.
Alex Brandon / AP
The outgoing president of the United States, Donald Trump, was indicted in the wake of the disturbances on Capitol Hill.
The federal charges filed so far are mostly for crimes like trespassing, but prosecutors have said they are weighing more serious charges against at least some of the rioters. Some were ex-military and highly trained policemen.
Sherwin said this week that he has organized a group of national security and public corruption prosecutors whose sole purpose is to press charges of sedition for the “most heinous acts that occurred on Capitol Hill.”
Air Force Officer Colonel Larry Rendall Brock, Jr., was arrested Sunday in Texas after being photographed on the Senate floor during the deadly riot wearing a helmet and heavy vest and zippered plastic handcuffs.
Evelyn Hockstein / The Washington Post
Supporters of President Donald Trump crowd the United States Capitol on January 6.
“He wants to kidnap, restrain, maybe try, maybe execute members of the United States government,” Assistant US Attorney Jay Weimer said, without providing details.
Brock’s attorney, Brook Antonio II, noted that he has only been charged with misdemeanors. Antonio said there was no direct evidence that Brock broke doors or windows to enter the Capitol, or did anything violent once he was inside.
On Thursday, authorities also arrested a Utah man who filmed the fatal shooting of the Trump supporter inside the Capitol. Police shot Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran, as she tried to climb through a broken window into the speaker’s lobby.
John Sullivan, 26, a self-described journalist who filmed the shooting, told the AP earlier this week that he was only there to document the events at the United States Capitol and did not attend. to riot as a Trump supporter.
In one video, Sullivan can be heard cheering on the rioters as they broke through the final barricade in front of the Capitol and saying, “We did this together. … We are all part of the story. “
