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 obstructing the counter, the solitary 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 has not been tried in this case,” said a jury who spoke to reporters 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 do not care about democracy, only about power. “And as a result, it dissolves our country.” 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 in a row between hundreds of rioters at the Capitol to be prosecuted by the Justice Department. In the first two cases, jurors also convicted the defendants on all charges. Assistant Attorney General William Dreher said Thompson, a university pest controller 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. MP’s 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. “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. However, he decided that jurors could listen to recordings of the speeches Trump and Giuliani delivered on January 6, before the riots broke out. A recording of Trump’s statements was heard. Samansky claimed that Giuliani, Trump’s adviser and former mayor of New York, incited the rioters to take part in “battle trials” and that Trump provoked the mob by saying, “If you do not fight like you do, you are not fighting.” I will now have a country “. But 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.
