WASHINGTON — A federal judge appointed to the bench by former President Ronald Reagan said Friday that the public discourse about the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — and the cases against Donald Trump supporters being prosecuted for committing crimes in support of the once and future president – was distorted.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said Friday that while the events of January 6 may be a “distant, hazy memory” for many Americans, there were many who suffered that day and will never forget the attack, emphasizing that “truth and justice, right and and order” were fundamental principles of the legal system. The jurors who heard the cases, Lamberth said, “know how dangerously close we came to losing the peaceful transfer of power, that great cornerstone of the American republican experiment and perhaps our most important contribution to posterity.”
Lamberth — who had previously said that the “ridiculous” claims Republican politicians made about the attack on the Capitol “could portend even greater danger to our country” — made his comments during the sentencing of a man running for office in Congress previously held by former Rep. George Santos.
Philip Grillo had been convicted of a crime of obstruction of an official proceeding, but following the Supreme Court’s decision on that charge over the summer, Grillow filed a motion for acquittal, which the government did not oppose. Therefore, Grillo was sentenced Friday to one year in prison on the remaining crimes.
“We fucking did it, you know? We stormed the Capitol,” Grillo said in a video he took of himself inside the Capitol, the Justice Department said. “We closed it down! We did it!”
Lamberth, who sentenced Grillo to 12 months in prison, had rejected Grillo’s argument to delay his sentencing because of the possibility that Trump would pardon some of all the January 6 rioters. He ordered Grillo to step back or be taken into custody immediately, rather than surrender.
“Trump is going to pardon you,” said one of Grillo’s supporters in the courtroom galley. “Donald has you, Phil.”
That Bronx man, along with another Grillo friend and supporter who is also involved in politics, falsely identified themselves with the names of two of their political rivals in an attempt to troll both their rivals and reporters, but NBC News was in able to determine their true identity. identities.
“Trump is going to pardon me,” Grillo said as he took off his belt on orders from the U.S. Marshals who took him into custody.
Philip Sean Grillo at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Before sentencing Grillo, Lamberth said his job was “to facilitate the search for the truth, interpret the law, apply it to the facts and dispense justice as the law requires.”
Lamberth said the evidence in most Capitol riot cases was “overwhelmingly strong” and that it was “very disappointing that so many jurors had to be torn from their daily lives to hear from rioters who would rather spout mostly false defenses than take responsibility for their actions.”
Although everyone was “aware that the president-elect has publicly considered publicly pardoning people who participated in the Capitol riots at various points in his campaign,” Lamberth said, he had “no say in that decision.”
But he has tried to dispel some of the multitude of untruths that have polluted the public discourse about the research.
“The basic premise of our legal system is that truth and justice, law and order, are values of paramount importance, and worth protecting, even at great cost,” Lamberth said. “These proceedings and others like them demonstrate that our justice system always works, regardless of the political winds of the day. That is a message worth sending.”
Royce Lamberth during a ceremony honoring the Chief Justice for his service on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on July 15, 2013.
“After reading dozens of indictments related to January 6, I can confidently say: No one has been prosecuted for protected First Amendment activity. No one is being held hostage. No one has been made a prisoner of conscience. Every rioter is in the situation he or she is in. participates because he or she broke the law, and for no other reason,” Lamberth said.
Lamberth said Grillo and other rioters should be convicted “without regard to the defendant’s political beliefs or any other characteristic, and without regard to whether our decisions will be popular.”
“That’s what it means to have an independent judiciary, that’s what it means to have peace and order,” he said. “A jury of Mr. Grillo’s peers has found that he broke the law when he participated in the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, and it is up to this court to hold him accountable. So now, bound by my oath of office and my allegiance to the Constitution of the United States, that is what I will do.”
As of Nov. 6, approximately 1,561 suspects have been federally charged with crimes related to the Jan. 6 attack, according to the Justice Department. More than 1,100 people have been convicted and more than 600 people have been sentenced to prison terms ranging from a few days behind bars to 22 years in prison for a Proud Boys leader convicted of seditious conspiracy. That leader, Enrique Tarrio, testified elsewhere in the courthouse this week during the trial of a former police officer accused of illegally providing Tarrio with information in the days before the attack.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
