OPINION | This article contains the author's opinion.
Very alarming information has surfaced that the Department of Justice is withholding potentially exculpatory evidence in court cases concerning January 6 defendants.
This is the first documented concession from the department.
Channing D. Phillips, Acting United States Attorney, said more than 14,000 hours of documentary footage of the January 6 events is being kept out of the hands of defense attorneys as well as and the public.
This has a major impact on the case United States v. Couy Griffin as well as other cases.
Griffin was arrested for Entering and Remaining in a Restricted Building and Disorderly and Disruptive Conduct in a Restricted Building, on January 19. Griffin is a county commissioner for Otero County, New Mexico.
Here’s why this potentially exculpatory footage matters:
The potentially exculpatory footage could also provide clues to potential FBI agents and other undercover officers working the extremist groups in the January 6 crowd. At least one undercover agent with the Metropolitan Police Department was confirmed by a Jan. 6 court filing…
The DOJ has not charged any of the 557 defendants with treason, insurrection, or an attempt to overthrow the government, a legal fact that stands in stark relief with the exaggerated claims being made by the U.S. government.
It has, however, still managed to have overcharged scores of defendants for felonies that are now being pleaded down to petty misdemeanors.
“So far, at least 30 defendants have pleaded guilty,” CBS News reported on Wednesday. “At least 24 have pleaded guilty to misdemeanors only, while six have pleaded guilty to felonies.”
It appears the Biden Justice Department prosecutors obtained felony charges in many cases based on “almost no meaningful review of actual evidence about what happened; it used fear and hysteria to justify doing so,” Human Events observes.
“Now they are being pressed to provide the evidence that is supposed to support the felony charges they brought, and are unable to do so in the timeframe required by law. So they are abandoning the cases on the best possible outcome available—the least serious of all federal crimes, ‘petty’ misdemeanors.”
“Now that the DOJ has gone down the path of exchanging guilty pleas to misdemeanors for some defendants charged with felonies, it will become more difficult to not do the same for a much larger number of defendants where the facts are substantially the same,” the Human Events piece added.
Acting United States Attorney Channing D. Phillips responds, “Although we are aware that we possess some information that the defense may view as supportive of arguments that law enforcement authorized defendants (including Defendant) to enter the restricted grounds, e.g., images of officers hugging or fist bumping rioters, posing for photos with rioters, and moving bike racks, we are not in a position to state whether we have identified all such information.”
Kyle Becker of Becker News concludes, “There is publicly available evidence of Capitol Police officers opening doors for attendees of the Electoral College protest, opening gates, posing for selfies, telling protesters to proceed as long as they remain peaceful, and watching unarmed rioters take over the Senate chambers and give speeches, despite outnumbering them.