Trump's 1/6 Pardons Come Back to Bite Him with Failed Prosecutions
Donald Trump’s pardons of his deadly violent 1/6 insurrectionist mob are coming back to bite him in what might be the beginning of the “find out” stage for him.
The Daily is outside the Beltway, democracy first journalism. You can support us by becoming a subscriber.
Donald Trump’s pardons of his deadly violent 1/6 insurrectionist mob are coming back to bite him in what might be the beginning of the “find out” stage for him.
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro's office racked up yet another failure as a Judge rebukes charges by pointing to Trump’s 1/6 pardons, with Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui saying, "To charge people for what seems to be lesser conduct and then say they’re so dangerous they have to be locked up. It puts prosecutors in an impossible position.”
They charged Paul Anthony Bryant, who is a Black attorney and an Army veteran who was deployed to Afghanistan, with threatening to kill National Guardsmen.
The police report claims that Bryant made verbal threats to members of the Guard and allegedly Bryant allegedly shoulder checked one of the Guardsmen's shoulders. They say when they picked him up he was carrying a permitted handgun with no magazine, but had one in the chamber. However, he had no holster. They say this is not in compliance with DC carry laws. So they charged him with felony threats while armed, simple assault, and a weapons violation.
Faruqui released Bryant, calling it "perhaps one of the weakest requests for detention I have seen,” according to WUSA9.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica Bove argued for Bryant’s detention both days and said the U.S. Attorney’s Office would appeal his release. Faruqui, who served 12 years himself as a federal prosecutor in D.C., said Bove was in a tough position arguing for Bryant’s detention in a courthouse where prosecutors had not sought to detain hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants accused of worse conduct. Trump’s decision earlier this year to grant all but a handful of riot defendants blanket pardons further “undercut” prosecutors’ detention arguments, he said.
“To charge people for what seems to be lesser conduct and then say they’re so dangerous they have to be locked up,” Faruqui said. “It puts prosecutors in an impossible position.”
Video posted to various social media outlets on August 25 has Paul Bryant narrating his detainment after he “was swarmed by nearly 20 officers in Logan Circle, D.C. He was handcuffed for an hour, his car searched without consent, and never told why he was being detained.” He claimed during the video that the officers were violating his civil rights.
Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump reposted the video on Instagram, with a quote from Harriet Dreams:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Daily to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.