- We're just beginning the
investigation into what gave rise to the January 6th
attack on the US Capitol. But what we're learning
is that this was no fluke. This was planned in
advance from everywhere from Instagram to
Facebook, to the dark web. And this wasn't just idle chatter from some rando on a
conspiracy theory forum though. They certainly participated as well. No, a lot of these people
were middle-class Americans who just contracted brain worms
from Newsmax, OAN, Fox News and sometimes even their
relatives on Facebook. And while it's certainly possible
that some of these people never thought that it would
get out of hand the way it did a lot of these people
planned it ahead of time. And what unifies all of
these people together is that they are all going to face incredibly harsh criminal sentences for some of the things
that they perpetrated whether they intended to do it or not. And while some of the perpetrators
flew in on a private jet and are now asking for
a presidential pardon, let's talk about what
crimes all of these rioters and their leaders might be charged with. Hey, legal Eagles. It's time to think like
a criminal defense lawyer because a lot of these
rioters are going to need one. Now, before I dive into
the litany of crimes that these writers might face there are two general considerations that I think are particularly
interesting here. The first is that a lot of
people have been surprised at the relatively light charges that have been levied so far. So far hundreds have been charged and probably hundreds more
will be charged as well. But people have been surprised
at the types of crimes that they've been charged with, many face lesser charges,
such as unlawful entry, disorderly conduct and
defacing public property, and only a few have been accused
of the more serious crimes like felony violations of the right act. And we're gonna talk about
that in just a second. But one thing that is overlooked here is that these might not be the final charges. It's pretty common for
authorities to make arrest based on readily proven charges in
this case such as trespassing. And then weeks later prosecutors can seek a grand jury indictment
on more serious charges. And a lot of this has to do with the way that federal courts operate because in order to charge
someone with a felony, you have to go before a grand jury, a grand jury although it
has a very grand title is really just a group of individuals that act as a check on
prosecutorial power. Even before things go to trial, generally speaking a district attorney, or in this case a US
attorney would have to go before a grand jury and say, here's the probable cause
for me to indict a criminal. And only after the grand jury signs off on that particular proceeding can you then indict someone
for a felony charge? One way around that is
a US attorney can swear an affidavit of probable
cause to a magistrate judge and get what's called a criminal complaint to start the proceedings and avoid having to convene a grand jury. You basically start the
process by complaint and you can get a complaint for either a misdemeanor
charge or a felony. But the difference is that, while you can charge a misdemeanor without ever going to a grand
jury, generally for a felony you have to go in front of a grand jury within 30 days of getting
that criminal complaint. Now, there are two main
reasons why you might wanna use the complaint process and might
explain some of the things that we're seeing with
respect to the rioters. The first is that some jurisdictions don't actually have a grand
jury convened right now because of COVID related reasons. And the other is that you
might use a criminal complaint to get someone into the court system to get them under the court supervision so that you can go back and charge more serious things later. So with the initial charges filed the federal prosecutor might
go before a grand jury later and then seek significantly
more serious crimes. And even then once there
is a formal indictment you can always convene a grand jury to get a superseding indictment and charge them with
even more serious crimes. So if you are a Capitol rioter and you think you're
off relatively scot-free because you were just charged
with misdemeanor trespass more serious charges may
definitely be on the way. Now, the other issue that
I think is overarching here is the issue of conspiracy, because a lot of these people
coordinated with each other both before they attacked and
laid siege to the Capitol. And then even while they
were in the midst of it certain people coordinate with each other. There is truly a federal
conspiracy statute but for the most part that's an add on to other
and different crimes. People have to agree to some sort of crime and there has to be a meeting of the minds but you can't conspire to
do something not illegal. You can't conspire with your friends to go
have dinner together. That's not a crime, I
guess unless you're talking about COVID risks, but
let's put that aside. You cannot conspire to do
something that's not a crime but the benefit of charging
someone with conspiracy from a federal prosecutor's
perspective is that, you don't actually have to
complete the crime to be guilty. You just have to take one overt act in furtherance of that conspiracy or in furtherance of that
ultimate criminal end. So if there are
circumstances that give rise to an agreement, a meeting of the mind where people take at
least one step toward it, then effectively all of the
people who are participating in the conspiracy can
face penalties that are basically the same as the
initial underlying crime itself. So we're just about to talk
about all the different crimes that all these people
might have committed. But on top of that, if
any particular person regardless of what individual crimes they might've committed themselves, if they agreed to participate in a conspiracy to commit
one of these crimes they could be guilty of
that conspiracy as well. But with that understanding, let's dive into the actual
crimes that the Capitol rioters might be facing. Now, of course, there were
a lot of people there doing a lot of a legal things. So not everyone is
likely to have committed one of these crimes, but
this is sort of a smattering of the things that they're likely to face. And the first is the word, that you've probably been hearing a lot these days and that is sedition in particular a seditious conspiracy found in 18 U.S.C. section 2384 which states that if two or more persons conspired
to overthrow, put down or destroy by force the
government of the United States or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force
the authority thereof or by force to prevent hinder or delay the execution of any
law or by force to seize take or possess any property
of the United States. Now we have covered the law of sedition and treason many times on this channel. And at this point, you're
probably sick of hearing me talk about how it's not sedition. It's never a sedition that
these people are guilty of. Well, congratulations, because
this is not the same case. This is probably a slam dunk
for many of the rioters. They probably committed sedition because lots and lots of people stormed the Capitol clearly used force. Specifically they tried
to prevent Congress from certifying the election and certifying that Joe Biden is the president of the United States. If that's not using force to oppose a law of the United States,
I'm not sure I know what it is. So despite the fact that
it's never a sedition here it's probably sedition. And by the way, because
the events of January were so excited credibly preposterous that's the legal term. I've noticed a ton of new
people coming to the channel but only a small number
are actually subscribed. So if you enjoy this legal analysis, and I wanna see me lose my
mind over the next thing I'll have to explain as a
lawyer, make sure you subscribe, but there's actually an interesting Coda to this whole sedition conspiracy thing which is that in September of 2020, the DOJ created a memo
which actually recommended charging protesters with section 2384. The only thing is that
those protestors were the BLM protestors over the summer. The memo was authorized by former attorney
general Bill Barr signed by now acting attorney
general Jeffrey Rosen. And they intended it to be used against black lives matter
protesters and Tifa. And the memo goes on to
recommend charging protesters with violations of 18 U.S.C.
1361 damage to federal property 18 U.S.C. 844 use of fire or explosives 18 U.S.C. 231a civil disorder,
18 U.S.C. 2101 a riots. 18 U.S.C. 875 interstate communications 18 U.S.C. 1369 damage
to veteran's monuments and 18 U.S.C. 1952
interstate foreign travel or transport patient in aid
of racketeering enterprises. And no, I am not going to
cover Rico in this video but this memo is a
really interesting lesson that all of these things
that are on the books can be charged in circumstances that you may or may not agree with. And while a lot of people
want to throw the book at the Capitol rioters, perhaps they might not feel as strongly about throwing the book at the protestors over the summer who supported BLM. So that takes us to the other buzzword that you've probably been hearing a lot. And that is insurrection. Now that's covered in
18 U.S.C. 2383 rebellion or insurrection and section
2383 makes rebellion against the United States a crime, specifically whoever
insights sets on foot assists or engages in any
rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof or gives aid or comfort
there too shall be fined under this title or imprisoned. Not more than 10 years or
both end shall be incapable of holding office under the United States. As I've covered before, there are a whole bunch
of other criminal laws that apply here that are probably a better fit than rebellion. This sort of rebellion insurrection. We might be splitting hairs. They're not necessarily trying
to overthrow the government. They're just trying to
change the government from their perspective. So arguably I don't think this fits unless they did something really stupid like claiming it was a revolution. - [Interview] Why did you wanna go in? - We're storming the Capitol. It's a revolution - Come on. But arguably the same arguments
apply to 18 U.S.C. 2385 which is advocating the
overthrow of the government though a lot of people did
some incredibly stupid things that might actually toe
the line on these ones. For example, the infamous racist known as Baked Alaska whose
real name is Tim Gionet, live streamed himself breaking
into the Capitol building and called for all the
Congress members to be hung in the middle of the riot. So who knows at this point, it depends on how aggressive the federal prosecutors want to be and how determined they
are to get a conviction in these different cases. But that takes us to another really
interesting federal statute which is the anti-riot
act in 18 U.S.C. 2101. Now the anti-riot act requires that a defendant travel
in interstate commerce or use its facilities
with the intent to follow one of the objectives
listed in one through four each with a riot as the objective. Now, if this crime sounds familiar, it's probably because
this was the central law at issue in the trial of the Chicago seven which I just did a video
on a few weeks ago. In that case, several defendants
were charged with traveling to Chicago to start a riot. Count one of the indictment
against them claim that they conspired not only to travel in and use the facilities
of interstate commerce with the intent to insight, organize and promote and encourage a riot but also to participate
in and carry on a riot to commit acts of violence
and further into the riot and to aid and abet
persons in such activities. But at the same time, this goes down as one of the black marks
of federal prosecutions because people largely perceive this trial the Chicago seven as being a show trial that was meant to punish the people who participated in protests and punish them for their
free exercise of speech. And that takes us to a whole
raft of the less sexy crimes but are ones that are probably going to be complete slam dunks, like the weapons charges that are found in 40 U.S.C. section 5104, which are oddly specifically tailored to this particular situation which says that you
cannot possess firearms and other dangerous weapons in Congress. And that you may not knowingly
with force and violence enter or remain on the floor of
either house of Congress. That really seems like
it applies to people who entered the houses of Congress. And then there is things like assault on federal
officers in 18 U.S.C. 1114 that makes it a crime to kill
or attempt to kill any officer or employee of the United States or illegally possessing
a dangerous firearm on any federal facility in 18 U.S.C. 930. And then of course it
should surprise no one that there's a whole bunch of laws that prevent the destruction
of federal property. And then of course there is perhaps the most on the nose law in all of this is 18 U.S.C. 351 congressional cabinet and Supreme court assassination,
kidnapping and assault which it should surprise
no one makes it a crime to assassinate, kidnap or
assault members of Congress, the cabinet or the Supreme court. It's also illegal to
attempt to do these things. So even if you entered
Congress with the intent to hurt a member of Congress, you looked around and you
couldn't find a member of Congress you're still probably guilty
of the attempt to do it. So as you can imagine, that's
real bad news for the guy that brought flex cuff
zip ties in to Congress even though he actually
wasn't able to hold any particular member of Congress hostage. And then finally the
last category of crimes that are likely under these circumstances, depending on how aggressive
federal prosecutors want to be are the whole swath of
antiterrorism laws that exist. It's entirely possible that
federal prosecutors will look at this as a terrorist incident. This was a whole bunch
of people using force and firearms and explosives and trying to undermine the government and achieve their political ends in an anti-democratic way
in direct contravention of the actual functioning US democracy. It's entirely possible. This qualifies as terrorism. And I would not be surprised, if federal prosecutors took that tack, but the bottom line is that
this is all incredibly serious and these people can be charged with any number of these crimes. And if they are indicted, then they'll need to call
a really good lawyer. And the best way to make that
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and I'll see you in court.
I'm gonna sticky this for now
"There's no way they'll be charged with insurrection unless they did something stupid like film themselves saying it's a rebellion"
Legal Eagle is an excellent channel.
Narrator: You know how I've covered 'Sedition' in other videos and it's never 'Sedition'? Well...
LOL
Imagine being one of these maniacs. You get home and think you were a patriot. Now you’re realizing you were played for a fool and facing so many charges. I love so much how many deleted profiles there are.
On the day of the capitol storming I was watching Stephen ignoramous because of a Reddit link. He’s since deleted all content. It’s so divine. These fucking idiots were so brainwashed and unable to have an original thought that they got fucking had! Trump left them to bleed out as well.
“Mommy, where’s daddy? He’s in prison babe.”
Legal Eagle is also suing the White House, DOJ and CIA over some denied FOIA requests involving stuff that was cut from John Bolton's book. And he's confirmed he's not withdrawing the suit now that Trump is out of office.
This is a great video. Very reassuring that the terrorists will actually be charged with a whole host of crimes to put them away for a long time.
Too bad it’s going to be a while before any of these traitors are put on trial.
I can’t wait to see the tears when they’re charged with more serious crimes.