WASHINGTON — A federal jury on Friday started deliberating the destiny of a QAnon believer who chased down U.S. Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman on Jan. 6, 2021.
Doug Jensen, an Iowa man who was one of many first ten rioters to enter the Capitol on the day of the riot, went on trial this week on seven counts, together with felony expenses of civil dysfunction, and assaulting, resisting or impeding officers.
Jensen has been in pretrial custody since final 12 months. He had been launched in a high-intensity pretrial program, however a choose ordered Jensen detained once more after he violated the circumstances of his launch by live-streaming an occasion hosted MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who has promoted conspiracy theories concerning the 2020 election.
On Jan. 6, Jensen filmed movies from the bottom of the Capitol constructing, the place he proclaimed — inaccurately, however with great confidence — that he was on the White Home. “Storm the White Home! That’s what we do!” he said in a single video.
The federal government and Jensen’s protection staff made their closing arguments Friday, earlier than the jury of 10 males and two ladies started deliberating within the afternoon.
Prosecutors argued that Jensen “was the rioter who wouldn’t again down” in his willpower to the stop the peaceable switch of energy.
“Each barrier he encountered that day, he was able to topple,” Assistant U.S. Legal professional Hava Arin Levenson Mirell stated. He scaled a 20-foot wall to achieve the Capitol, inhaled clouds of pepper spray “prefer it was oxygen,” and handed by way of police traces.
Goodman, the USCP officer who testified at Jensen’s trial this week, had “no back-up” when he confronted off with rioters, Mirell stated. And the mob, “led by the defendant,” didn’t withdraw regardless of being requested to by authorities.
“That was not a sport of observe the chief,” Mirell stated. Jensen was “weaponizing that mob.”
In his closing assertion, Jensen’s lawyer, Christopher Davis, painted his shopper as a “confused man” and “lone wolf” who had fallen for QAnon conspiracy theories. The pandemic “did very unusual issues to individuals” and “apparently, Mr. Jensen was one in every of them,” he stated.
Davis stated it took his shopper roughly 24 hours to determine that he was on the Capitol, not the White Home, including, that “exhibits you the way confused and the way jumbled his head is.”
He argued that his shopper didn’t lay a hand on anybody and denied that Jensen took half in among the chaotic scenes on scaffolding as prosecutors have alleged.
The federal government sought to dismiss these defenses of their rebuttal. The regulation doesn’t require bodily contact for the assault of an officer cost and if Jensen actually was confused, he would not have been capable of come so near Vice President Mike Pence in the course of the riot, prosecutors argued. “That doesn’t occur by confusion,” Assistant U.S. Legal professional Emily Allen stated.
Greater than 850 individuals have been arrested and greater than 350 convicted in reference to the Capitol assault.
This week, the FBI arrested 5 people related to the far-right America First motion, and a choose additionally sentenced a former Military reservist and Adolph Hitler fanatic who stormed the Capitol to 4 years in jail.
