Politics
Some Jan. 6 trials are on hold. Why? There’s too much evidence
The quantity of proof collected as a part of the investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, revolt rivals what the Hubble telescope has amassed in its three-decade orbit. And sorting via all of it has floor lots of its prison instances to a halt.
To hurry issues alongside, U.S. attorneys and public defenders have teamed as much as create a large, searchable database to comb via the hundreds of social media messages, movies and different proof produced when the assault on the Capitol was broadcast to the world by journalists, bystanders and the rioters themselves.
“In lots of even federal prison instances you have got one pocket book of proof, proper? You’ve possibly 50 to 100 reveals. In an enormous white-collar case, you might need a number of notebooks,” mentioned Loyola Legislation Faculty professor and former U.S. Atty. Laurie Levenson. “That is astronomically extra.”
Some judges are getting antsy about how gradual the instances are shifting. And a few Republican politicians have used the delays to criticize the Biden administration’s dealing with of the instances, saying it’s time to wrap up the investigations and transfer on, an argument that would get louder if the get together regains management of Congress subsequent yr.
U.S. attorneys are underneath immense strain to efficiently prosecute as many of those instances as doable and don’t need to threat defendants getting off on a technicality as a result of they weren’t given all of the proof towards them, or worse, proof that would clear them.
A courtroom sketch of Man Wesley Reffitt, left, and his lawyer William Welch in federal court docket in Washington on Feb. 28.
(Dana Verkouteren )
Constructing a database
At this charge it might take years to prosecute all of the instances. The Justice Division continues to announce indictments almost weekly. And remains to be attempting to establish at the least 350 extra folks.
Because of this, 14 months after rioters brawled with police, leading to a number of deaths and scores of accidents, brought about thousands and thousands of {dollars} of injury and disrupted the certification of President Biden’s victory, just one Jan. 6 defendant, Man Reffitt, has confronted a jury. Reffitt, a member of the Texas Three Percenter militia group, was discovered responsible on all counts Tuesday, together with obstruction of an official continuing and carrying a firearm whereas being unlawfully on Capitol grounds.
Since so lots of the instances contact on each other, Justice Division prosecutors determined the federal government is obligated to provide all related info to all defendants and let their attorneys establish info they deem related to their particular instances. Many defendants had been asking for a similar info, and a database meant the federal government wouldn’t should repeatedly hand over the identical proof.
In Might, the federal government employed Deloitte Monetary Advisory Companies LLP to assist it assemble a searchable repository for each prosecutors and protection attorneys to entry.
However, the proof couldn’t simply be thrown into the cloud. Among the work needed to be performed by hand.
It needed to be sorted in a logical means that enables defendants to search out info which may relate to their case.
For instance, to assist protection attorneys discover their shoppers within the crowd, the federal government created a GPS spreadsheet of the places of tons of of officers in the course of the siege so radio transmissions and body-camera footage may very well be searched by location and time.
Officers type a line to stop protesters from going deeper into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Occasions)
Interviews and depositions carried out by hundreds of legislation enforcement officers in all 50 states who used totally different recording software program needed to be formatted so all protection attorneys might entry it whatever the particular person software program they’ve.
The U.S. legal professional’s workplace for the District of Columbia declined an interview request in regards to the database and investigation, pointing as a substitute to its Feb. 9 memo on the standing of the invention course of that was filed in dozens of instances.
Physique-camera footage, nameless suggestions
Based on that memo, the database contains hundreds of hours of surveillance footage from the U.S. Capitol Police, the Metropolitan Police Division, the U.S. Secret Service and the Senate and Home flooring. It additionally contains the body-camera footage from officers within the melee, radio transmissions from responding legislation enforcement businesses, location knowledge for hundreds of units that related to the Capitol’s mobile community, social media posts and suggestions, in addition to interviews with witnesses, victims and tipsters, and all stories of officer misconduct. Proof is offered to protection attorneys on a rolling foundation.
U.S. attorneys are prioritizing probably the most requested materials: footage of the Home and Senate flooring, interviews with 94 cops and witnesses about improper use of drive, 18,484 nameless suggestions obtained by the Metropolitan Police Division and Secret Service recordsdata in regards to the whereabouts of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 6.
Amongst different proof, the division remains to be working to course of greater than 900 data of FBI interviews with legislation enforcement and about 26,000 pages of data from Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police Division.
FBI fliers searching for details about rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
(Jon Elswick / Related Press)
Prosecutors additionally instantly hand over case-specific proof to protection attorneys, reminiscent of laborious drives seized throughout an arrest or proof with figuring out info reminiscent of journey data.
U.S. attorneys informed judges final yr that the Jan. 6 investigation had already resulted in 250 terabytes of knowledge, roughly the equal of 32.5 million digital images or 500,000 hours of audio recordings. NASA’s Hubble has collected 290 terabytes of knowledge in 31 years of operation.
“This isn’t going to be a document-intensive case like many federal prosecutions are,” mentioned Brandon Fox, former chief of the prison division of the U.S. legal professional’s workplace for the Central District of California. “That is going to be all in regards to the movies. I’ve a tough time imagining one other prosecution with the sheer quantity of movies which are on the market.”
Fox mentioned giving the protection entry to a fulsome database and likewise particularly figuring out info that is likely to be related to their case echoes what federal prosecutors have performed on different difficult instances with a number of defendants. Fox led the federal prosecution group that introduced down former L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca and 20 others on obstruction of justice and different costs.
“We allowed protection attorneys to have entry to that database, however we might individually produce to the defendants issues that we thought individually had been relevant to them. And so we had the protection,” he mentioned. “That’s the very best factor they’ll do.”
Nonetheless, he famous that such measures gained’t cease defendants from arguing that discovering proof within the database that may clear them is like discovering “a needle in a haystack.”
Defendants anxious to get to court docket is likely to be hoping the federal government misses handing over a key piece of proof, one thing that would trigger a conviction to be overturned, he mentioned.
A photograph from U.S. Capitol Police safety video taken contained in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
(Division of Justice)
Based on the George Washington College Program on Extremism, the federal government has introduced 757 instances towards folks for crimes round Jan. 6, together with 51 Californians. Of these, 225 have pleaded responsible. The remaining defendants are largely in a holding sample. Many of the about 65 being held in federal custody are accused of assaulting cops.
Federal legislation requires trials to start inside 70 days of indictment or the protection can request the costs be dismissed. Fox mentioned this can be very uncommon for a case to be dismissed for a Speedy Trial Act violation. Judges typically cease the clock, as they’ve in almost each Jan. 6 case, for “good trigger.”
The proper to a speedy trial
That has some defendants, significantly these being held in custody, exasperated by how lengthy the method is taking.
Californian Daniel Rodriguez, who has been in jail since March 31, 2021, has repeatedly pushed for a trial date to be set. His legal professional Rebecca Levy mentioned in court docket that they primarily have the proof wanted to maneuver to trial. Rodriguez is accused of attempting to interrupt a window, brawling with police and repeatedly stunning Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone with a stun gun. Fanone had a coronary heart assault.
In a court docket continuing in August, Levy mentioned she was involved about her consumer’s speedy-trial rights, including, “Now we have been affected person up to now, however I’m involved about ready for this database to go surfing as a result of I’m getting some conflicting details about when precisely all of it might be uploaded.” She declined to remark for this story.
U.S. District Decide Amy Berman Jackson denied Levy’s request to set a trial date and saved the clock paused, saying the Justice Division was making a good-faith effort to provide proof. Rodriguez stays in a Washington, D.C., jail.
Levy once more raised the proof delays at Rodriguez’s March 3 standing listening to. That point Jackson allowed the clock to run for 2 weeks and mentioned she’s holding time on her calendar open within the hope the case can go to trial by August.
Different defendants out on bond appear prepared to provide the Justice Division time to prepare the proof for them.
Supporters of President Trump fill the steps of the U.S. Capitol earlier than a mob stormed the constructing on Jan. 6, 2021.
(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Occasions)
Los Angeles-based legal professional Tigran Martinian, who represents Rodriguez’s co-defendant Edward Badalian, has not been pushing to go to trial.
“It’s what it’s. There’s not a lot we are able to do about” the wait, Martinian informed The Occasions.
Badalian, who was charged in November with conspiracy, obstruction of an official continuing and aiding and abetting, and tampering with paperwork, is out of custody on bond. A 3rd unnamed defendant fled the nation, which is contributing to the delay, based on prosecutors.
Martinian mentioned that though being on bond provides restrictions to his consumer’s life, there’s additionally a profit.
“The issue as a protection lawyer is you need to put up the very best protection, and placing up the very best protection on a sophisticated case like this takes time,” he mentioned.
Some defendants is likely to be ready to see how sturdy the federal government’s proof is towards them earlier than deciding whether or not to hunt a plea deal or push to hurry up their trial, Loyola’s Levenson mentioned.
In the meantime, new proof is being added to the database. A whole lot of hundreds of data had been despatched to DeLoitte on Feb. 7. U.S. attorneys didn’t present a agency deadline within the memo for when the proof can be obtainable.
As soon as the database is full, the method is absolutely simply starting, Levenson cautioned.
Particular person federal instances typically take years, she mentioned, and convoluted instances like these arising from Jan. 6 are in a category of their very own.
A window on the U.S. Capitol was damaged in the course of the Jan. 6, 2021, revolt.
(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Occasions)
Within minutes on Wednesday morning, San Francisco got a new mayor — and a new plan for an emergency declaration intended to combat the fentanyl scourge that has killed thousands of people in the city over the past five years and has turned some neighborhoods into sidewalk drug markets.
Daniel Lurie, a Democrat, was sworn into office outside the gold-domed City Hall and began to detail his campaign promises about fighting the city’s drug crisis, which has claimed more lives in the city since 2020 than have Covid-19, car crashes and homicides combined. Mr. Lurie said that he had told his police and sheriff’s departments to redirect their personnel — moving from a temporary, sporadic effort to break up drug markets to a permanent, 24/7 operation.
He vowed that by this spring, police officers would have somewhere new to take people picked up for using drugs or for acting erratically in public — not just a jail or a hospital emergency room. A crisis center in the Tenderloin neighborhood will be staffed with health workers who can guide those who need treatment.
“Widespread drug dealing, public drug use and constantly seeing people in crisis has robbed us of our sense of decency and security,” Mr. Lurie said from an outdoor stage under sunny blue skies. “I refuse to believe that this is who we are.”
His declaration of a fentanyl emergency, which he promised after winning the hotly contested mayor’s race in November, consists of a package of ordinances that will speed its way to the Board of Supervisors, akin to a City Council, on Tuesday for what is expected to be swift approval.
The declaration would streamline the hiring of new city workers and the building of homeless and drug treatment facilities. A new ordinance will also allow the city to accept private donations to help fund Mr. Lurie’s promised 1,500 new shelter beds within six months.
Mr. Lurie, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune and the founder of an antipoverty nonprofit, said that fixing the city’s drug problems would be the only way to ensure that San Francisco itself makes a full recovery. Doing so, he argued, would be central to luring back office workers to downtown, tourists to hotels and small business owners to vacant shops.
“Recovery is possible, but it needs to be more than a possibility in San Francisco,” he said. “It must be our mission.”
Many of the proposals are familiar, and the packed crowd at the inauguration was full of former mayors and other city officials who were unable to make similar ideas a reality. Not in a city with a police department that city leaders say needs hundreds more officers; with a notorious bureaucracy that bogs down many city projects; and with lowered tax revenue that translates to a budget deficit approaching $1 billion over the next two years.
And then there is Mr. Lurie’s total lack of experience in government. The job of mayor is his first elected position.
Still, there was an aura of hope, as a who’s who of San Francisco filled the plaza. Paul Pelosi walked slowly to his seat with the help of a purple cane, more than two years after being bludgeoned with a hammer by an intruder looking for his wife, Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker.
California’s first lady, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, was there, too, though her husband, Gov. Gavin Newsom, could not attend because of the wildfires ravaging Los Angeles.
Mr. Lurie, who will accept only a $1 annual salary, owns a $15.5 million vacation home in Malibu, a beach town west of Los Angeles that suffered extensive damage in the fires. When he was asked Wednesday morning whether his home was still standing, a consultant whisked him away. His wife, Becca Prowda, an aide to Governor Newsom, said the couple did not yet know the home’s fate.
Mr. Lurie’s mother, the billionaire Mimi Haas, who donated $1 million to her son’s campaign and knocked on voters’ doors on his behalf, said she was “very excited” and confident he would turn the city around. She married the late Peter Haas, Levi’s longtime chief executive, when Mr. Lurie was a child.
Golden State Warriors Coach Steve Kerr addressed the crowd, comparing Mr. Lurie to a coach who can succeed only with the help of top-notch players.
“We have been through an awful lot in recent years, and our city has taken some hits, but we are bouncing back,” Mr. Kerr told the crowd. “Just like the Warriors, we have to bring our individual talents to the table with the idea of making the whole better.”
If Mr. Lurie is the coach, it is not clear who will be City Hall’s Steph Curry. Mr. Lurie has so far hired mostly outsiders from the business world to help him run the mayor’s office. On Wednesday, he said that in terms of department heads, “you all will see a lot of change.”
President-elect Trump pointed to a strategic benefit of the one-bill approach to budget reconciliation that he’s said he prefers during a closed-door meeting with Republican senators on Wednesday evening at the Capitol.
By combining legislation relating to both the southern border crisis and taxes into one reconciliation bill, Trump suggested that one issue could potentially force some lawmakers to make a difficult decision. For example, if a Republican doesn’t support a piece of the tax component, they would also have to vote against the border provisions because they are in one measure.
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Trump explained a strategic component to his one-bill reconciliation approach. (Getty Images)
With portions of Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act expiring this year, the party is looking to act quickly. But the tax debate in 2025 is expected to be more divided among Republicans than that regarding the border. In particular, there is some disagreement in the party on state and local tax (SALT) deductions, which can benefit some states more than others and have been hit by some Republicans as inefficient.
“If somebody, for example, in the House is balking because there’s not SALT in the tax agreement or some other provision they want, if that also means they’d be holding out and voting against the border, it might make it harder for them to do so,” Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., told Fox News Digital. “That’s a very valid point.”
While SALT was not posed as an example of this by Trump himself, it was mentioned by a GOP senator in a side conversation among other attendees as they went over the advantages of a one-bill approach, Hoeven said.
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Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., speaks May 4, 2022, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Hoeven faces a defector from his own party and a lightly funded Democrat on Tuesday, Nov. 8, in his race for a third U.S. Senate term from North Dakota. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, File)
A source familiar told Fox News that Republicans are preparing to go with Trump’s one-bill preference, but they are also keeping the potential for two bills, one on the border and another to address taxes, in their back pocket in the case of any significant obstacles.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told Trump that if one bill is what he wanted, that is what they are going to try first, the source said.
A number of senators have their own preferences for two separate reconciliation bills instead, and some made their cases to Trump during the meeting. However, the conference is set to move forward with Trump’s one-bill approach.
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Thune was “adamant” about supporting Trump’s agenda as leader, one senator said. (Reuters)
Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal came up during the discussion following Trump’s remarks about each. Trump has recently said he wants U.S. to take back control of critical trade medium the Panama Canal, while also expressing interest in making Greenland and Canada part of the U.S.
Sources familiar told Fox News that Trump brought these up himself during the meeting, telling senators at one point that these countries “were screwing with” the U.S.
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Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks with media outside Rideau Cottage on Monday, Jan. 6, in Ottawa. (AP/Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)
Several GOP senators took the opportunity to tell Trump that his comments on Canada were “transformative,” the sources said.
The senators believe his approach to Canada is already managing to change the country’s “behavior” and could have even contributed to the recent resignation of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the sources added.
SAN FRANCISCO — Four hours before he took the oath of office Wednesday to become San Francisco’s 46th mayor, Daniel Lurie started his day walking through the bleak confines of the Tenderloin district with the city police chief and passing out coffee to people at a homeless community center.
It was a deliberately symbolic move by Lurie, a nonprofit executive and heir to the Levi Strauss family fortune, who won office in November largely by appealing to disillusioned voters weary of the public drug use, brazen retail theft and sprawling homelessness that during the pandemic became commonplace in the Tenderloin and spilled into the downtown financial district.
Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie and his wife, Becca Prowda, take part in Wednesday’s inaugural festivities.
(Gabrielle Lurie / San Francisco Chronicle)
In his inaugural speech shortly before noon in front of San Francisco City Hall, Lurie pledged to crack down on the street anarchy that has plagued some areas of the city in recent years, feeding a “doom loop” scenario endorsed by conservative pundits.
“This is where our comeback begins,” Lurie said to a crowd of thousands that included his wife, Becca Prowda, daughter Taya, 13, and son Sawyer, 10, along with outgoing Mayor London Breed and a host of local and statewide political figures.
“I’m asking all of you, every single one of you, to join me in reclaiming our place as the greatest city in the world with a new era of accountability, service and change,” Lurie said.
Daniel Lurie is sworn in as San Francisco’s 46th mayor.
(Gabrielle Lurie / San Francisco Chronicle)
Lurie, a moderate Democrat who had never held elected office, entered the mayoral race as an underdog against Breed and three other City Hall veterans. In an election seen as a referendum on the city’s post-pandemic struggles with homelessness and street crime, Lurie pitched himself as a change agent who could lead San Francisco into an era of recovery.
His campaign gained momentum as he promised to end open-air drug markets and arrest fentanyl dealers, push homeless people into drug and mental health treatment and reinvigorate a downtown economy drained by the exodus of tech workers after COVID-19 shutdowns made remote work an easy option.
Lurie was able to spread his message broadly by drawing on personal wealth. He funneled nearly $9 million of his own money into his campaign, while his mother, Miriam Haas, widow of deceased Levi’s executive and heir Peter Haas, contributed an additional $1 million to an independent expenditure committee backing his election.
Lurie’s inaugural speech, though light on policy details, offered a glimpse into how he planned to accomplish the bold goals he laid out on the campaign trail.
“San Francisco has long been known for its values of tolerance and inclusion, but nothing about those values instructs us to allow nearly 8,000 people to experience homelessness in our city,” he said. “Widespread drug-dealing, public drug use and constantly seeing people in crisis has robbed us of our sense of decency and security.”
At the top of his to-do list: introducing a package of ordinances declaring a fentanyl state of emergency. Lurie said he would ask the Board of Supervisors, an 11-member body that acts as the legislative branch for the city and county, to quickly approve the ordinances, directed at curbing use of the deadly opioid and allowing the city to “bypass the bureaucratic hurdles standing in the way of tackling this crisis.”
The board gained five new members in the November election, a turnover expected to bring a more moderate tone to a board that for years was seen as ultra-liberal and often tussled with Breed — also a moderate — over tough-on-crime policy proposals.
Lurie said he would work to embed more behavioral health specialists in first-responder units to address the overlapping crises of homelessness, addiction and untreated mental illness, and announced plans to open a 24/7 center as an alternative to jail for police to bring people in need of treatment and other services.
He also said he wants to expand a city program that provides funding and assistance for bus tickets and other transportation to send homeless people who aren’t from San Francisco back to their home communities.
And in the face of a projected $876-million budget deficit, Lurie promised “zero cuts” to sworn police officers, 911 operators, EMTs, firefighters and nurses on the front lines of public health emergencies.
San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said he was encouraged by Lurie’s plans and his recognition of the need for “around-the-clock resources” not just for police, but also for city workers across departments working to solve San Francisco’s public safety and health challenges.
“The Police Department is 24/7 … but a lot of the departments that we rely upon to help solve some of these problems aren’t 24/7,” he said. “It’s not all about enforcement. It’s not all about policing.”
Scott said he would like to see Lurie continue recent efforts by Breed’s administration to more aggressively clear sprawling tent encampments that have fanned out across the city, as well as public health efforts credited for a sharp decline in drug overdose deaths in the city last year.
The chief medical examiner’s office recorded 586 fatal overdoses in San Francisco in the first 11 months of 2024 — a nearly 23% decrease, or 174 fewer deaths, compared with the first 11 months of 2023. San Francisco public health experts attributed the decline to the widespread availability of naloxone, a medication that can rapidly reverse the effects of opioid overdoses, as well as more emphasis on prescribing buprenorphine and methadone, medications that treat opioid addiction long-term.
On Tuesday, Breed’s last full day in office, her administration noted that crime rates had also fallen in 2024, with reports of car break-ins dropping 54%, property crime down 31% and violent crime down 14%.
Though San Francisco’s struggles have made national headlines in recent years, particularly in right-wing media promoted by President-elect Donald Trump, Lurie largely left national politics out of his messaging, nodding only once during his speech to the “great sense of fear and loss about the state of our country right now.”
“San Francisco must be a city where every individual feels safe, valued and empowered,” he said. “That means standing firm against discrimination and fighting for the dignity of all communities, no matter what comes our way.”
Lurie said the city is showing progress and maintained that “hope is alive and well in San Francisco.” But he warned that “lasting change doesn’t happen overnight.”
Still, “if we are consistent, if we have vision, if we aren’t afraid to make tough decisions,” he said, “San Francisco will rise to new heights.”
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