Trump Inauguration Protests

[seemslikeadream]

Inauguration Protesters Found Not Guilty On All Charges In Jury Trial

A jury on Thursday found the six defendants not guilty on all charges they were facing in connection with Inauguration Day protests in Washington, DC.


A jury on Thursday found six defendants not guilty on all charges they were facing in connection with Inauguration Day protests in Washington, DC, multiple sources reported.

This was the first trial for the nearly 200 defendants still facing charges in connection with anti-Trump demonstrations on Jan. 20 that turned violent. More trials for other defendants are scheduled for December and throughout 2018. A question going forward will be if the acquittal prompts the government to drop any cases or if prosecutors will press ahead as planned.

The verdict is a victory not only for the six defendants and their lawyers, but for other defense attorneys, anti-Trump activists, and free speech advocates who had criticized the mass arrests and prosecution as examples of government overreach and who worried the case signaled a new era of criminalizing political dissent.

A spokesperson for the US attorney's office in Washington did not provide immediate comment.

Police arrested 234 people on Jan. 20, charging them with rioting. A grand jury later returned an indictment that included charges for rioting and property destruction.

Over the following months, prosecutors dropped charges against 20 people, and reached plea deals with 20 others. Only one person, Dane Powell, has pleaded guilty to a felony charge; the rest admitted to misdemeanors. Powell is also the only person so far to receive a sentence of jail time — he was sentenced to four months.

The first trial — for Jennifer Armento, of Philadelphia; Michelle Macchio, of Asheville, N.C.; Oliver Harris, of Philadelphia; Brittne Lawson, of Aspinwall, Pa.; Christina Simmons, of Cockeysville, Md.; and Alexei Wood, of San Antonio, Texas — started in mid-November.

The jury began deliberating on Dec. 15. The six defendants faced seven charges: Five felony counts of property destruction, along with two misdemeanor counts of engaging in a riot and conspiracy to riot. The felony charges carry maximum penalties of 10 years in jail and a $25,000 fine. The misdemeanors have maximum penalties of 180 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.

The defendants initially faced an additional felony charge for inciting a riot, but Judge Lynn Leibovitz dismissed that count at the end of the trial. Leibovitz denied a motion from the defense to dismiss the rest of the charges as well, though.

The defendants included people who said they were serving as medics and others who said they were participating in anti-Trump demonstrations but didn't participate in or support the violence. According to the government, the property destruction was valued at more than $100,000. One defendant, Alexei Wood, said he was at the protests as an independent journalist, and press freedom advocates have raised concerns about his prosecution.

There was no evidence presented at the first trial that any of the six defendants were the ones who broke windows on Jan. 20. The prosecution's theory was that they were all still criminally responsible because they were there to support the rioters. The defense countered that under the First Amendment, people exercising their free speech rights weren't required to leave a protest just because someone near them was violent; they argued that the government hadn't shown evidence that the individual defendants were at the demonstration that day in order to back up the bad actors.

The defendants arrested on Jan. 20 are being tried in small groups, and more trials are scheduled for December and throughout 2018. Defense lawyers, anti-Trump activists, and free speech advocates have been watching the first trial as a test of the prosecution and defense strategies in these cases — and in any future cases involving arrests of protesters — going forward.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/zoetillman/ina ... .tkmXKZApP

[seemslikeadream]

Anti-Trump Protesters Cleared of Charges After Gov’t Caught Withholding 69 Critical Recordings

by Colin Kalmbacher | 2:53 pm, May 31st, 2018


Ten men and women facing various felonies related to Inauguration Day protests against President Donald Trump had charges against them dismissed on Thursday, after unconstitutional and untoward behavior by the prosecution was discovered.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Kerkhoff and her team appeared to have hid 69 recordings from the defense. Those recordings include 66 videos and three audio samples of the defendants originally made by employees at undercover media outlet Project Veritas.

The recordings reportedly show the defendants discussing methods to de-escalate tense situations and reveal their intent not to initiate violence with anyone else at the protest, a far cry from what the government has alleged in the case. Kerkhoff previously told Judge Robert Morin that no recordings existed from the meetings where those 69 recordings were made. In fact, at least 35 of those newly-revealed recordings were made at the meetings in question.

Defense attorney Andrew Clarke noted the alleged malfeasance in an overnight filing with the Washington D.C. Superior Court on Wednesday. He wrote:

The Government has succeeded in misleading over 200 co-defendants, their attorneys, and three Honorable Superior Court Judges to believe there were only seven videos in its possession from Project Veritas. Only by Order of the Court and more recently, its own disclosures, we now know the truth, that the Government withheld 69 additional recordings by Project Veritas and altered others.

Clarke’s motion continues, “As the government admitted in its May 30, 2018 email to the Court, many of these videos from the action camp at American University involved discussions of de-escalation tactics. So if [a police officer] did see co-defendants at the action camp, it is disturbing that the government is taking the position that videos showing co-defendants teaching other codefendants how not to engage in violent protest is irrelevant to a case about violent protests.”

Such evidence, Clarke noted, is “relevant, material, and exculpatory.” While hiding said evidence and performing subterfuge in front of a federal court to conceal said evidence, Kerkhoff has spent the past several months arguing that the defendants played direct and key roles in an alleged conspiracy to riot.

Judge Robert Morin agreed with the defense, saying, ‘“I do think it’s a serious violation.”

Kerkhoff originally indicted in excess of 200 journalists and activists on those and related charges. After losing outright in a case against the first six defendants last December, Kerkhoff dropped charges against all but 59 individuals. Some of those individuals are going free on Thursday or soon thereafter. As noted by First Amendment attorney Chip Gibbons and others, however, multiple defendants still remain in other cases nominally related to those anti-Trump protests. The impact Wednesday’s disclosures will have on those cases is presently unclear.

This isn’t the first instance of prosecutorial misbehavior in the present case. Last week, Kerkhoff’s team admitted to hiding a 55-minute-long video and purposely misrepresenting edits made to a different video. In sum, the 71 altered or hidden files suggest a wide-ranging conspiracy to conceal potentially exculpatory evidence in order to secure convictions. In federal law, that’s known as a Brady violation.

The other Assistant U.S. Attorneys who took part in the government’s prosecution of the #J20 journalists and activists are AUSAs Ahmed Baset and Rizwan Qureshi. Law&Crime repeatedly attempted to discuss Thursday’s dismissals and the government’s bad behavior leading to said dismissals. Neither Qureshi nor Kerkhoff responded to multiple voicemails.

Baset answered his phone but declined to comment on the case, saying, “I cannot take any media inquiries.” When further pressed as to whether he personally took part in the apparent evidentiary cover-up, Baset replied, “I cannot answer any questions.”

On Baset’s request, Law&Crime then followed up with the public affairs line for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. Multiple voicemails were left with that office as well, but no responses were forthcoming at the time of publication.
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/an ... -evidence/