Some rioters say they were following Trump’s wishes
’18 NASCAR Cup champ aims for Daytona 500 victory, more
They broke through barricades, shattered windows and seized control of the U.S. Capitol, some making death threats against members of Congress hiding inside, others brutalizing the police officers who stood in their way.
As the cases against nearly 200 of the Capitol rioters wind through federal court, many of the defendants blame the commander in chief they followed for the violence that left five dead during the insurrection Jan. 6.
In court documents, media interviews and through official attorney statements, staunch supporters of former President Donald Trump argue they were merely doing what they thought the nation’s leader had asked, some citing a cult-like loyalty.
Though experts said it’s unlikely the Senate would call rioters as witnesses, a handful volunteered to testify against Trump in his impeachment proceedings. Short of that, legal scholars said, Congress could enter their statements about Trump’s influence into the record during the House trial.
The notion that insurrectionists were following the call of the president will not likely be enough to prove innocence in their own cases, legal experts said, but Trump’s purported influence over their thinking could lead to reduced punishments and mitigated sentences as part of plea deals, especially for those with no prior criminal histories.
“Trump didn’t get in the car and drive him to D.C., but it’s important to understand the context,” said attorney Clint Broden, who represents Garret Miller in Texas. The Department of Justice used Miller’s own social media posts to charge him with entering the Capitol and threatening Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., whom he said should be assassinated.
“You have to understand the cult mentality,” Broden said. “They prey on vulnerable victims and give them a sense of purpose. In this case, Trump convinced his cult followers that they were working to preserve democracy.”
In an 80-page brief outlining arguments to support the impeachment charge, House managers focused on Trump’s statements in the months leading up to Jan. 6. Before Congress set out to confirm the Electoral College results that day, Trump spoke to thousands of supporters at the Ellipse, roughly 1.5 miles from the Capitol.
He told them, “We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
The House brief says Trump aimed his supporters “like a loaded cannon.”
Trump’s defense attorneys, led by Bruce Castor and David Schoen, denied in a 14-page reply brief last week that he incited the crowd, saying his statement about fighting did not have “anything to do with the action at the Capitol.”
In a trial memorandum filed this week, Trump’s attorneys called the rioters “a small group of criminals who deserve punishment to the fullest extent of the law.”
In charging documents and court records, the FBI cites social media feeds, media statements and agents’ interviews with at least 29 people arrested for taking part in the riot who said they came to Washington to support Trump or were doing what he told them to do.
Robert Bauer told FBI agents he marched to the Capitol from the rally because the president told him to.
Jorge Riley, who traveled to Washington from Sacramento, California, posted on Facebook that morning, “I’m here to see what my President called me to DC for.” He ended up charged with violently entering the Capitol.
Jacob Chansley became perhaps the most recognizable intruder after he sat in the vice president’s chair, bare-chested with his face painted under a horned, fur-lined headdress. He told the FBI he came to Washington because Trump asked all “patriots” to do so.
After Trump left office without pardoning any of the rioters, Chansley’s lawyer said his client would be willing to testify against Trump in the impeachment hearing.
“Many members of the mob that attacked Congress and the Capitol understood themselves to be doing exactly what Trump wanted and directed them to do – ‘fight like hell’ and do whatever was needed to ‘Stop the Steal,’ ” Michael Stokes Paulsen, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas and a conservative constitutional law scholar, said in an email to USA TODAY.
“Trump’s words and actions stand on their own, of course,” Paulsen said. “But the fact that they were understood by many as intended to produce precisely the actions that occurred tends to confirm Trump’s responsibility.”
Robert Sanford traveled to Washington from Pennsylvania on a bus with about 50 other conservatives, his lawyer said, with no intention of rioting or storming the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Then, the former firefighter heard the speeches.
Sanford was among thousands who marched from the rally to the Capitol, where the riot turned deadly. The group “had followed the President’s instructions,” according to federal charging documents.
The FBI arrested Sanford after a viral video showed him hurling a fire extinguisher into a group of police officers.
“The president and his groups rallied the people that did not plan on doing anything,” said Enrique Latoison, an attorney who represents Sanford. “The president was the adhesion. He’s the glue that got all of these people together.”
Latoison said he does not believe that alone is a plausible defense, especially in Washington, where juries could be more liberal. President Joe Biden won 92% of the vote there in November.
“I do not know if that’s a legitimate defense to say, ‘My commander in chief made me do it,’” he said. “We are not in the middle of Montana where folks may relate to being persuaded by the president.”
Christopher Grider of Eddy, Texas, was charged with destruction of government property, aiding and abetting, entering and remaining in a restricted building, disorderly and disruptive conduct, obstruction of an official proceeding and an act of physical violence on the Capitol grounds, among other federal crimes.
After the riot, Grider, 39, appeared on KWTX-TV in Waco, where he said he did it for Trump.
“The president asked people to come and show their support,” he said. “I feel like it’s the least that we can do; it’s kind of why I came from central Texas all the way to D.C.”
In a Parler post before the riot, which the FBI collected and included in charging documents, Bruno Cua shared one of Trump’s tweets and wrote, “President Trump is calling us to FIGHT!” Cua is charged with assaulting a federal officer and other crimes stemming from the riot.
Kenneth Grayson was even more explicit about it. Court records show that in Facebook messages that the FBI obtained with a search warrant, Grayson told family members and associates he was preparing to travel to Washington from Pennsylvania.
“I’m there for the greatest celebration of all time after Pence leads the Senate flip!!” he wrote. “OR IM THERE IF TRUMP TELLS US TO STORM THE (expletive) CAPITAL IMA DO THAT THEN!”
Stanley Greenfield, who represented Grayson in Pittsburgh, said his client was responding to the president and did not intend to cause any violence. He noted that his client did not strike or hit anyone – Grayson was merely seen entering and walking around, Greenfield said.
“He was going because he was asked to be there by the president,” Greenfield said. “He walked in with the crowd. But he went there, yes, with the invitation of the president. He just wanted to be a part of it.”
Evidence against Trump
The statements that those charged in the riot made about Trump prompting their actions could play a role in his impeachment trial, experts said.
“I would firmly expect the managers to use some of those statements,” said Frank Bowman, a University of Missouri law professor and the author of “High Crimes and Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump.” “They’re not going to call them as witnesses, but they’re surely going to use them. It’d be crazy not to, and I don’t think they’re crazy.”
The Senate has not determined whether any witnesses will be called, and those criminally accused are less likely candidates than administration officials.
Witnesses are potentially risky because they could say something crazy or off-color during live testimony in the Senate proceeding. Because they face criminal charges, they could plead the fifth and render their testimony useless or seek a deal to testify, said Princeton political science professor Keith Whittington.
Bowman said the statements of those charged helps rebut the assertions from Trump’s legal team.
“If the president’s lawyers are going to argue that he wasn’t convincing anyone to engage in insurrection, that he wasn’t trying to induce any irregular behavior, it rather runs against that claim to show that there are people who took exactly that message,” he said.
Whittington said House managers will try to lay out what happened that day and Trump’s culpability in it.
Whittington said statements made by those who have been charged add weight to the impeachment case because they come from supporters Trump rather than his critics.
“It’s important that those were people who did storm the Capitol, so they engaged in this behavior that leads us to the place we’re at now,” he said. “They’re allies of his, and they are people who take his words very seriously, so it’s useful to know what they understood him to be saying.”
Experts predicted a strategy called the “public authority defense” could be a factor in the punishments judges hand down to convicted rioters.
The argument is used when defendants claim a government agency or official – in this case, the president – directed them to commit a crime. The defense could figure prominently in some of the cases, said Ziv Cohen, a clinical psychiatrist who testifies as an expert witness in criminal trials.
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Cohen said the rioters could argue that they cannot be held personally responsible – or criminally culpable – because they believed they were following the orders of Trump, Sen. Josh Hawley. R-Mo., and other officials in the former president’s inner circle.
Cohen said he doubts juries will be lenient – or use this as a pathway toward a not-guilty verdict – but it could be used as a mitigating factor to reach a favorable plea or reduced sentence.
“A person could plausibly claim some confusion or belief that they were working at the behest of the U.S. government,” Cohen said. “You have a president, and people close to the president, who are asking people to come to Washington for a rally, and there’s this drumbeat about preventing the election from being stolen.”
“I’ll always say, ‘Not enough. Not enough. Not enough wins.’ Yeah, 25 wins is great, but the other way I look at it is, it’s only 25?” Joey Logano
NASCAR driver, who is just one of four Cup series drivers to post 25 wins before the age of 30
A couple hours before he strapped himself into his No. 22 Pennzoil Ford Mustang for qualifying runs at Daytona International Speedway, Joey Logano admitted that if he happens to win the Daytona 500 on Sunday, he’ll be happy, but he won’t be satisfied. Won’t be satisfied?
“No, because it’ll mean I’ve won two and I’ll want three,” Logano told The Republic during a phone interview on Wednesday.
Logano won the Great American Race back in 2015 and led NASCAR’S Cup Series with a career-best six victories that year. It wasn’t enough then and it hasn’t been over the past several years, either, in which he’s been one of the sport’s most consistent drivers.
In the past eight years alone, the 14year veteran has posted a staggering 180 Top 10 finishes, 112 Top 5 finishes and totaled 24 victories. That’s a career for almost any other driver, but not to Logano, who always wants more and remains fueled by that desire.
“Yeah, I’m not satisfied. Like, it’s never enough,” he said. “I know in life saying ‘it’s never enough’ is not a healthy thing, but in sports, I think it’s the healthiest thing you can have. Saying, ‘Where is there more? Where is there more?’ I think that’s what’s kept our consistency there.
“It means you can’t get complacent.” You can hear and feel Logano getting worked up when he is reminded of his 25th career Cup Series victory last March at Phoenix Raceway. That win put him in rare company, as he became one of only four drivers to have won 25 premier series races under the age of 30,
joining Richard Petty, Jeff Gordon and Kyle Busch.
Getting reminded of that only made him question why he hadn’t won more.
“It’s definitely cool. It’s definitely a neat stat to have,” he said. “But at the same time, I’ll always say, ‘Not enough. Not enough. Not enough wins. Yeah, 25 wins is great, but the other way I look at it is, it’s only 25? I don’t know, I guess it’s just the competitor in you sometimes that you just always want more, always think you can have more.
“Maybe that’s what makes you good, but at the same time, it’s something that doesn’t let you be satisfied very often.”
Logano won Rookie of the Year honors at age 19. He won his first and only Sprint Cup Series championship in 2018. He’s won of just six drivers to ever win Rookie of the Year, a series championship and the Daytona 500. Looking back and looking forward with still miles and miles to go, Logano, now 30, was asked how much he’s changed or found out about himself as a driver.
“I think anyone from age 19 to 30 has found a lot of changes in themselves and most of the time, it’s for the better,” he said, laughing. “I was 19 and thought I knew everything and knew nothing. Now I’m 30 years old and know I don’t know everything. It’s a very humbling sport. Experience does mean a lot and I’m very grateful to have the amount of experience I have now.
“Being in it for as long as I have and me being only 30, you look at it like I’m only halfway through my career. How crazy is that? I’m like the only person who has that, and I think that’s the big advantage I have over the field is that as time goes, that experience is going to keep growing and growing to where it’s going to make me tougher and stronger as a race car driver.”
It takes more than that, though, to win the Daytona 500. You must be aggressive, yet patient. You must be cautious, yet confident. Logano doesn’t put a whole lot of stock into the word
“lucky,” but there’s another word that ultimately always improves your chances at Daytona.
It’s called “alliances.” Logano knows he can rely on his fellow Ford drivers from Team Penske to help navigate around the superspeedway. But whether it’s blocking or drafting maneuvers, he also knows the importance of developing a temporary on-track bond with his rivals and sometimes, even his enemies.
“That makes it pretty unique,” he said. “Obviously, with superspeedway racing, you work with your teammates and your manufacturing teammates as well. There’s always that chance, though, at the end of the race where, if you see how the Daytona 500 goes, you might not have any friends left and you find yourself working with the person you least likely thought you’d be working with.”
Logano pauses and then has to clarify his comments, saying, “Working with each other is defined in different ways. Just because you’re pushing someone along doesn’t mean you’re out there to help them at that moment, you might be trying to position yourself in a better spot.”
It’s sure to happen a multitude of times on Sunday, just like it always does. That’s why the word “trust,” he said, doesn’t really apply to the word “alliances.” When you’re in it to win it, Logano says, “I don’t think you can trust anybody that much.”
“There’s a lot on the line here,” he said. “The Daytona 500 means so much, it’s hard to say who you can trust or who you can’t. You have to at least try to trust, especially your teammates and your Ford teammates that they’re going to have your best interests in mind.”
The only thing on Logano’s mind is taking the checkered flag and getting his name inscribed once again on the prestigious Harley J. Earl Trophy. After all, winning it once isn’t enough. But if he wins it a second time, that probably won’t satisfy Logano, either.
If it were up to him, he’d probably want to be like Tom Brady and win the Daytona 500 at least seven times the way Brady has won seven Super Bowls.
“Yeah, I wish. I hope I do,” Logano said. “But I don’t know. He’s on a different level.”
Laura Latzko
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