The federal court on Thursday also found Dustin Byron Thompson, 38, guilty of all five other charges in his indictment, including stealing a hanger from an office inside the Capitol during the uprising on January 6, 2021. The maximum sentence for counting the obstruction, the lone felony, would be 20 years in prison.
The jury did not buy Thompson’s defense, in which he blamed Trump and members of the president’s inner circle for the uprising and for his own actions.
“Donald Trump was not tried in this case,” said a jury who spoke to reporters only on condition of anonymity.
The jury, a 40-year-old man, said as he left the courtroom: “Everyone agrees that Donald Trump is guilty as a whole.  A lot of people were there and then he went home.  “Dustin Thompson did not.”
Thompson himself, testifying a day earlier, admitted to taking part in the mob attack and stole the grill and a bottle of bourbon.  He said he regretted his “shameful” behavior.
“I can not believe the things I did,” he said.  “Crowd mentality and team thinking are very real and very dangerous.”
However, he said he believed Trump’s false claim that the election had been stolen and was trying to support him.
“If the president almost orders you to do something, I felt compelled to do it,” he said.
U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, who is due to convict Thompson on July 20, described the defendant’s testimony as “completely dishonest” and his behavior on January 6 as “reprehensible.”  The judge also blamed Trump after the verdict was announced.
“I think our democracy has a problem,” he said, adding that “charlatans” like Trump are not interested in democracy, only in power.
“And as a result, it is dissolving our country,” the judge said.
Prosecutors did not request that Thompson be taken into custody immediately, but Walton ordered his arrest and handcuffed him.  The judge said he believed Thompson was a flight hazard and a danger to the public.
Thompson’s trial was the third to appear before a jury among hundreds of riot cases in the Capitol that were being prosecuted by the Department of Justice.  In the first two cases, jurors also convicted the defendants on all charges.
Assistant Attorney General William Dreher said Thompson, a college-educated exterminator who lost his job during the COVID-19 pandemic, knew he was breaking the law when he joined the mob that attacked the Capitol and, in his case, looted the Senate deputy.  office.  The prosecutor told jurors that Thompson’s lawyer “wants you to believe that you have to choose between President Trump and his client.”
“You do not have to choose because this is not the trial of President Trump.  “This is the trial of Dustin Thompson for what he did at the Capitol on the afternoon of January 6,” Dreher told the jury during his closing remarks.
Defense attorney Samuel Shamansky said Thompson did not shy away from taking responsibility for his behavior that day.
“This embarrassing chapter of our story is all on television,” Samansky told jurors.
But he said Thompson, unemployed and consumed by a consistent conspiracy theories diet, was vulnerable to Trump’s lies about stolen elections.  He described Thompson as a “pawn” and Trump as a “gangster” who abused his power to manipulate his supporters.
“The vulnerable are carried away by the strong, and that is what happened here,” Shamansky said.
The judge barred Thompson’s lawyer from calling Trump and his ally Rudolph Giuliani as witnesses.  But he ruled that jurors could hear recordings of speeches Trump and Giuliani delivered Jan. 6 before the riots broke out.  A recording of Trump’s statements was heard.
Samansky claimed that Trump’s adviser and former New York major, Giuliani, had instigated the rioters by participating in “battle trials” and that Trump had provoked the mob by saying, “If you do not fight, you are not like I will have a country now “.
But prosecutor Dreher told jurors that neither Trump nor Giuliani had the power to “legitimize” what Thompson did at the Capitol.
The anonymous juror said he was “laughing under my breath” when Thompson testified that he took the hanger to prevent other rioters from using it as a weapon against police.
Thompson has been charged and convicted of six counts: obstructing a joint congressional vote to certify an Electoral College vote, stealing government property, entering or staying in a restricted building or premises, disorderly conduct or harassment in a restricted building, behavior in a Capitol building and parade, demonstration or picketing in a Capitol building.
He had driven from Ohio to Washington with a friend, Robert Lyon, who was also arrested less than a month after the uprising.  Lyon pleaded guilty in March to two counts of theft of state property and misconduct and is due to be sentenced on June 3.
Thompson and Lyon took a ride with Uber in Washington on the morning of January 6th.  After Trump’s rally and speech near the White House, they headed to the Capitol.
Thompson was wearing a bulletproof vest when he entered the building and went to the MP’s office.  The FBI said agents later searched Lyon’s cell phone and found a video showing a looted office with Thompson shouting, “Wow!” “Hello Merika! This is our house!”
“(Trump) did not force you to leave.  You did not have to walk every step of the way to the Capitol, did you? ”  Dreher asked Thompson on Wednesday.
“No,” Thompson said.
“Did you choose to do that?”  Dreher asked.
“I followed the presidential orders, but yes,” Thompson said.
More than 770 people have been charged with federal crimes resulting from the riots.  More than 250 of them pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors.  Thompson is the fifth person to be tried on riot charges.
On Monday, a court convicted a former Virginia police officer, Thomas Robertson, of invading the Capitol with another off-duty officer.  Last month, a court convicted a Texas man, Guy Refit, of breaking into a building with a shotgun.
A judge hearing a testimony without a jury has ruled against two other defendants in the Capitol riots in separate trials.  U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden acquitted one of the charges and partially acquitted the other.
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Associated Press reporter Jacques Billeaud contributed from Phoenix.