Interesting and informative legal case described below, which I hope is not nor will not be a legal loophole that could destroy the Federal prosecution of so many January 6 defendants in the Capitol insurrection.
The story is reported on here
from Politico.com with this headline:
“January
6 trial centers on lingering mystery: “Where was Mike Pence as riot raged?”
Where precisely was Mike
Pence while a mob descended on the Capitol on January 6, 2021?
A defendant set to face just the second trial in the nearly 15 months since the attack intends to make that question the centerpiece of his defense Monday.
And the judge in the case
just gave him the green light to grill the Secret Service
about it.
That defendant, Couy Griffin,
the leader of “Cowboys for Trump,” says Pence’s evacuation to a secure location
“took him off of Capitol grounds — and outside a Secret Service perimeter
established to protect Pence” while lawmakers counted Electoral College votes,
the last step to certify the 2020 presidential election.
Why it matters: Prosecutors charged Griffin with breaching a Secret Service-protected zone, and they say the argument is nonsense.
Not only was
Pence within the Capitol complex for the duration of the riot, they say, but it
wouldn’t matter if he left, since the trespassing law he’s charged with only
requires that Pence intended to return.
Griffin’s case has become an
important test for the DOJ with potential ramifications for hundreds of those
charged with “entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds” on
January 6, a misdemeanor that carries a one-year maximum jail sentence.
If U.S. District Court of
D.C. Judge Trevor McFadden
(a Trump appointee) decides Pence’s precise location matters, it could echo
across many of the nearly 800 cases stemming from the insurrection.
Prosecutors have
repeatedly emphasized that the law only requires that Pence “was or would be
returning to the Secret Service zone” to prove Griffin’s crime. They recently amended the language of the charges to
emphasize that point.
In addition, prosecutors
say that Secret Service witnesses will refuse to disclose Pence’s precise
location — even if called to the witness stand — because it could jeopardize
national security protocols for the current vice president, Kamala Harris, and
her successors.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Janani
Iyengar said in DOJ’s court filing: “This information is so sensitive and
important to the security of Secret Service protectees that any Secret Service
witness who testifies in this case will not answer any questions about the
precise location of the emergency relocation site to which the Vice President
was taken on January 6, 2021. To require any witness to testify to such facts
would compromise the mission of the Secret Service and would put the government
in the untenable position of trying to prosecute a statute aimed at protecting
a Head of State, while simultaneously compromising the future security of a
Head of State.”
Impact on future cases: Regardless of what Judge McFadden decides
about the relevance of Pence’s precise location, his order that the Secret
Service witness be subject to some cross-examination means that if the trial
against Griffin proceeds, the government’s efforts to protect that information
from disclosure in other cases could be for naught.
My 2 Cents: As I said a
very interesting case and question for the future which I’m sure will be
repealed if Griffin’s challenge is turned down and thus will go up the legal chain to
the USSC, possibly.
I think Griffin’s challenge is very weak. How weak you might ask?
Probably as weak as Abe Lincoln said in a senate debate with Stephen A. Douglas and about his weak answer to a debate question: “As weak as soup made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that has starved to death.”
Yep, that weak.
Thanks for stopping by.
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