WASHINGTON — With just days left until the 2024 election, Donald Trump supporters who fell for his lies about fraud in the last election continue to face legal consequences for storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, even as Trump managed to stave off his own criminal trial and again become the Republican presidential nominee.
On Friday afternoon, a young Trump supporter who stormed the Capitol faced sentencing inside a federal courthouse in Washington, just a few hundred feet away from the crime scene. Caleb Berry, a now 23-year-old who stormed the Capitol along with members of the far-right Oath Keepers group, stood before the judge in a black shirt and apologized to everyone in the courtroom, and to the country.
Berry had pleaded guilty to conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding and cooperated with the government, testifying at two trials for fellow Oath Keepers. At one trial, Berry testified that Oath Keeper Kelly Meggs — who was convicted of seditious conspiracy — told a group of fellow members on the east front of the Capitol that they “were going to stop the vote count” before they formed a military stack and headed into the building “like a battering ram.”
While it might seem strange to say, Berry told the judge Friday, he is thankful to federal prosecutors for bringing the case against him, saying they gave him a “stern wake-up call” that took him off the “path of radicalization” he was on. Berry called his conduct “foolish” and said he let his emotions get the best of him because he thought he was doing something “for the greater good,” but he had now come to realize that was “entirely false.” Berry said he’ll regret his decisions “for the rest of my life.”
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, who oversaw the trial of numerous Oath Keeper defendants — including founder Stewart Rhodes, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy along with other members — said it is important for Americans to understand the seriousness of the evidence against the group, noting that he’d read some comments online disparaging the case. He spoke about the massive cache of weapons that the Oath Keepers had stashed across the river in Virginia in preparation for Jan. 6, weapons that Rhodes expressed regret over not bringing to the Capitol that day.
“What this group did and planned for was violence,” Mehta said. “The words don’t lie.”
The Oath Keepers, he added, were at the Capitol to “violently prevent the laws of this country from being executed.”
While Berry’s conduct was not honorable, Mehta said, what he did afterward was. The judge said that the American people owe Berry a debt of gratitude for standing tall and for telling the truth, even when it was difficult and could result in personal repercussions.
“It took a 20-year-old, 19 at the time, to figure it out,” Mehta said. “He did what was right. He did what was honest. He did what was decent.”
Berry came to understand, Mehta said, that the “cause wasn’t just, it wasn’t righteous. It was wrong.”
Mehta sentenced Berry to three years probation, the sentence requested by federal prosecutors due to his extensive cooperation.
Trump’s role
Mehta expressed frustration with the lack of knowledge many Americans have about the Jan. 6 attack in general and reflected on the number of political leaders who were so willing to cast reality and the law aside and dismiss the results of a free and fair election.
“We’ve got one country,” Mehta said, adding that unless people are willing to follow the law, to accept the election results, they might as well tear up the Constitution, the document that officials take an oath to protect and uphold.
“We do this on the theory that the truth is supposed to prevail, and in this case, it did,” Mehta said.
But, he added, “None of us know precisely what will happen in the next few weeks.”
It’s long been clear that Trump would order the dismissal of the case against him if he’s elected to the White House, but this week Trump made it even more explicit, saying he’d fire special counsel Jack Smith “within two seconds” if elected.
He’s also promised to pardon an undefined number of Jan. 6 rioters, even as new arrests continue to roll in.
Trump has personally been charged with four federal criminal counts related to attempting to overturn the 2020 election results — conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding and conspiracy against rights. He has pleaded not guilty to all four. The indictment returned against Trump in August alleges that Trump used an avalanche of “unsupported, objectively unreasonable, and ever-changing” claims of voter fraud that he knew to be false in a criminal conspiracy to overturn his election loss.
More arrests this week
The Justice Department arrested several more Jan. 6 rioters over the last week, including Jeffrey Newcomb, who federal authorities say built a giant “Trump 2020 Keep America Great” sign that was used as a battering ram against a line of police officers.
Robert Bixby, a resident of California who was wearing a “Trump” hat when he stormed the Capitol, told federal investigators that he went because he believed the election was stolen, according to the FBI.
He was at the east rotunda doors as the mob broke though, the FBI said, and then joined a group that pushed past police officers toward the House chamber. Bixby only turned around when a chemical spray hit the air, using the collar of his shirt to cover his nose and mouth, the FBI alleged.
Zachary Pearlman, the FBI says, stormed the Capitol and then faced off with a line of police officers inside the Capitol rotunda, “moving past other rioters to get himself closer to the line of officers.”
Pearlman then began “jeering at the officers, pointing at them repeatedly with both hands,” the FBI said, before he “pushed against a police officer’s riot shield.”Jeremy Michael Miller, the FBI said, fought with police officers on the west side of the Capitol on Jan. 6.
He “grabbed a bike rack, and tried to pull it away from the police” and then “linked arms with other rioters and pushed their backs into the barricades” while wearing a “Trump 45” hat, according to the bureau. Miller then “tried to pull a riot shield away from another police officer, grabbing with both hands,” the FBI said.
Two other Jan. 6 defendants arrested this week — Roger Voisine and his brother Reynold Voisine — had been listed on the FBI’s Capitol Violence webpage, where the bureau seeks public assistance to identify key Jan. 6 rioters who committed violence that day. The Voisine brothers were known to online sleuths who have helped identify hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants by the nicknames #TableLegWhacker and #BlueJavelin.
Roger Voisine, the FBI said in an affidavit that relied upon the work of online “sedition hunters,” was seen on video of the Capitol attack “striking the police repeatedly with a broken-off table leg with nails and other fasteners still embedded in the end of the object.”
Roger Viosine was wearing a hat with the phrase “elect that motherf—– again,” and also threw a rod at police officers before throwing several shoes and another unidentified object, the FBI said.
Roger Voisine “hurled a pipe at police officers, forcibly pushed into police officers’ shields, grabbed and attempted to drag a police officer into the crowd, threw a black rod at and struck a police officer, threw three shoes at police officers, threw an unidentified object at police officers, swung a table leg with protruding nails at police officers, threw that same table leg at police officers, and shined a flashlight into the eyes of police officers,” the FBI alleges.
His brother Reynold Voisine, meanwhile, was nearby when rioters forcefully dragged Metropolitan Police Department officer Michael Fanone from a tunnel to the Capitol where law enforcement was facing off with rioters and pulled him into the mob, the FBI said. Reynold Voisine then passed back a police riot shield and hurled a crutch at police officers before ramming the police line with a shield, per the bureau.
“Roger Voisine twice threw a crutch at police officers, forcibly threw a blue pole at and stuck police officers, and used a shield to ram into police officers,” the FBI said.
Both brothers told the FBI in interviews before their arrests that they deleted photos they took that day.
More than 1,500 people have been arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 attack, and federal prosecutors have secured convictions against more than 1,100 defendants. More than 600 have been sentenced to sentences of incarceration.
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