Jan. 6 defendant wants jurors to blame Trump, not him, for decision to breach CapitolA man charged with breaching the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, told jurors Wednesday he believed he was following “presidential orders” to go inside the building and attempt to prevent Congress from finalizing the 2020 election.
Dustin Thompson — who is facing charges on attempting to obstruct Congress’ electoral vote-counting session, as well as for stealing a coat tree from a Capitol office — argues that then President Donald Trump’s apocalyptic rhetoric on Jan. 6, capping a monthslong campaign to convince supporters the election was stolen, drove him to join the mob that breached the building.
Once inside, Thompson participated in the ransacking of the Senate parliamentarian’s office, before stealing the coat tree and a bottle of liquor. But he said he viewed his actions as an extension of Trump’s demand that his supporters “stop the steal,” his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen by Democrats.
“We’re going to lose our country today if we don’t put a stop to these election results,” Thompson said he thought as Trump addressed supporters on the morning of Jan. 6.
Thompson, who took the stand in his own defense, admitted he broke multiple laws in service of overturning the 2020 election but said he wanted jurors to acquit him because he believed he was acting on Trump’s orders. He spoke in a hushed, sheepish tone, his lawyer repeatedly asking him to speak up so the jury could hear him.
Thompson’s strategy is the first time jurors are being squarely presented with a claim that Trump inspired and caused rioters to take violent action in support of his effort to overturn the election. Though dozens of defendants have argued in court filings that they believed Trump had authorized the assault on the Capitol, judges have largely rejected that contention and said rioters should be held to account for their own actions. But whether a jury sees that argument differently will be an important test that could reverberate across hundreds of other cases.
Thompson and his wife, Sarah, who also testified on his behalf Wednesday, described Thompson’s yearlong descent into conspiracy theories. They said he lost his job in March 2020 and began consuming increasing amounts of pro-Trump conspiracy theories online. He chose to travel to Washington in response to Trump’s call, he said, and believed Trump intended to march with the crowd to the Capitol.
Already, the question of whether Trump conspired to obstruct Congress’ Jan. 6 session — the last step by lawmakers in the transfer of power from Trump to President Joe Biden — has been the subject of legal scrutiny. Trump is facing multiple lawsuits alleging he bears responsibility for the violence that sent Congress fleeing for safety and resulted in several deaths and more than 140 police officers being injured. A federal judge in California recently ruled that evidence gathered by congressional investigators supports the likelihood that Trump conspired to commit felony obstruction of Congress.
But whether a jury believes that Trump’s role effectively removes the criminal liability of members of the mob is another story.
Prosecutors urged jurors to reject Thompson’s narrative, repeatedly emphasizing that Thompson, 38, made his own choices to enter the Capitol, walk past police officers under attack and steal the items he’s charged with taking. Assistant U.S. Attorney William Dreher repeatedly pushed Thompson to acknowledge that he made his own decisions that day, including to enter the Capitol and to remain there for hours. He also chose to flee from police when they began to query him about the coat tree.
Prior to Thompson’s testimony, prosecutors walked jurors through a painstaking array of video evidence of the Capitol breach and the officers who struggled to contain the chaos. They showed Thompson’s participation in the breach of the parliamentarian’s office. They also showed text messages between Thompson, his wife and a co-defendant, Robert Lyon, who previously pleaded guilty.
“I’m taking our country back,” Thompson said in one of the texts, after his wife had messaged him a screenshot of Trump’s video telling rioters to go home.
Defense lawyers also used Sarah Thompson’s testimony to help characterize Thompson as slowly becoming radicalized by Trump and conspiracy-oriented news sources. She said she was a Democrat who supported Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in their bids for the presidency. Sarah Thompson described her husband as holding moderate and libertarian political views but said he gravitated toward Trump in 2016, veering notably to the right. But she said she supported Thompson’s right to protest and helped him arrange his travel.
Under cross-examination, she described her husband as “very smart,” a point prosecutors emphasized to suggest he was capable of making his own choices.
The trial also featured testimony from multiple Capitol police officers, including Ronald Lucarino, who described pushing against members of the crowd as they entered the building through shattered windows and doors. And he said he distinctly remembered feeling “the butts of guns” in some of their waistbands.
Dustin Thompson’s attorney, Samuel Shamansky, asked the officers who testified, some of whom served in the department throughout multiple presidencies, whether any previous president had organized a rally and march intended to interrupt the transfer of power. All uniformly said they had not. Shamansky characterized the mob as acting with “one concreted purpose,” which he said was to “defile and disrupt” the transition of power.
Shamansky asked Lucarino — who pushed back on the mob after it breached Capitol hallways — whether the phrase “fight like hell” would characterize the rioters he encountered, a reference to Trump’s remarks that morning.
“Absolutely,” Lucarino replied.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/13/january-6-defendant-donald-trump-00025019
