Rioter in Pelosi's office was brazen, entitled and dangerous, judge rules

Angry, stupid and ugly is more like it

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Yesterday and today have been really bad days for Trump rioters arrested for their part in the attack on the Capitol on January 6.  For example, Richard Barnett, the man who stole a piece of mail belonging to Nancy Pelosi and was photographed with his feet up on her desk, was returned to custody in Arkansas after being released on his own recognizance two weeks ago.  US District Chief Judge Beryl Howell, sitting in her chambers with a view of barbed wire fencing and armed National Guard troops defending the Capitol, described Barnett as “brazen, dangerous and entitled” and ordered his bail revoked and that he be remanded to federal custody while he awaits trial. 

Judge Howell was unsparing in her description of Barnett and what he did on January 1. The judge read in a shocked tone from comments Barnett made after leaving the Capitol:  "I wrote her a nasty note, put my feet up on her desk, and scratched my balls.   Nancy, Bigo was here you bitch."

“What happened on that day in the U.S. Capitol was criminal activity that is destined to go down in the history books of our country. This was not a peaceful protest,” Howell wrote in her order returning Barnett to jail. “Hundreds of people came to Washington, DC, to disrupt the transition of power and to thwart Congress, a branch of the federal government, in carrying out its duties, in fulfilling its constitutional task of officially certifying the votes of the Electoral College."

Speaking of Barnett in a videoconference hearing, Judge Howell said, “He [Barnett] not only entered the Capitol without authorization, but he strutted into the office of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. He felt so entitled, he put his feet on the desk. He felt so entitled, he picked up her mail and walked off with a piece of mail.”

Howell pointed out that Barnett had driven more than 1000 miles each way to Washington and came prepared with a “stun device” (described as a 950,000 volt folding stick) and a walkie-talkie he used to communicate with other rioters.  “He knew exactly what he was doing,” the judge said. “The entitled behavior that he exhibited in videos and photographs when inside the Capitol show a total disregard for the law, a total disregard for the U.S. Constitution,” said Howell. “This violence disrupted a constitutional function of Congress.”

Eric Munchel, nicknamed in the press “Zip-tie Guy,” and his mother were ordered back to jail by a D.C. judge after being released on their own recognizance in Tennessee.  Prosecutors argued that Munchel had broken into the Capitol wearing a bullet-proof vest and carrying a stun gun and zip-ties normally used by police to detain suspects who are under arrest.  He was overheard bragging to another rioter that he had stashed more weapons nearby, outside the Capitol.  When he was arrested, police found what they described as “an arsenal” of 15 firearms in the house he occupied with his mother.

In yet another case, New Jersey resident Scott Fairlamb was returned to federal custody after prosecutors found videos of him striking a Capitol policeman in the head with a collapsible metal baton.  A posting by Fairlamb on Facebook showed him brandishing the baton outside the Capitol and saying, “What patriots do? We fuckin’ disarm them and then we storm fuckin’ the Capitol,” He apparently deleted other videos he had posted showing him breaching the doors of the Capitol.  Fairlamb is back in jail, and the judge in charge of his case has not set a date for a new bail hearing.

See what’s happening here?  Prosecutors are having to go around the country, defendant by defendant, and file motions to hold these rednecks in pre-trial detention because local cops and local judges had released them on bail the day they were arrested.  What do they have in common?  Well, like Arkansas good ‘ole boy Richard Barnett, they are uniformly white, stupid, angry and ugly.  Oh yeah, they are violent criminals.  Almost forgot that.

In contrast, 427 protesters were arrested and jailed during Black Lives Matter protests in Washington last June.  In all, the Washington Post estimated there were as many as 14,000 arrests made across 49 cities last summer during protests against police brutality.  There have been only 172 arrests of Capitol rioters in the 23 days since January 6.  Several thousand were estimated to have breached Capitol grounds and the Capitol itself, access to both of which was tightly restricted that day because of security concerns.  It was a violation of the law to cross police barriers around the Capitol on January 6, and it is always against the law to enter the Capitol without going through secure entry procedures.  Thousands of rioters broke through police barricades and illegally entered Capitol grounds.

In other words, thousands of white lunatics carrying weapons, many of them wearing body armor, fight Capitol police and injure more than 140 of them and kill one, and the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are just now getting around to arresting some of them and only in the last two days making sure they are held in pre-trial detention and not released on “their own recognizance,” which means, “by the color of their skin.”

It looks like old Lady Justice has been doing a little peeking from behind her blindfold to check skin color as she continues to tilt her scales of justice in all-too-familiar ways, huh?