WASHINGTON — An attorney for a man who took a coat rack and a bottle of liquor during the U.S. Capitol attack argued to a jury on Tuesday that former President Donald Trump “authorized” the Jan. 6 assault on the building by convincing “vulnerable” people like his client that the election was stolen.
Dustin Thompson, a 38-year-old from Ohio, is the third Jan. 6 defendant to face a trial by jury after the convictions of Guy Reffitt and former police officer Thomas Robertson. Thompson faces six charges, including obstruction of an official proceeding and theft of government property. His codefendant, Robert Lyon, pleaded guilty last month, admitting that he and Thompson traveled to D.C. together and that Thompson stole the coat rack and later fled from police when they were confronted on the grounds of the Capitol.
Samuel Shamansky, at attorney for Thompson, told jurors on Tuesday that his client had “snatched the coat rack, foolishly,” and that there was “no question” that his client took part in the “horrible” event on Jan. 6 that interrupted a “solemn and sacred proceeding.”
But, Shamansky argued, the “genesis” of the attack began months before Jan. 6, and responsibility fell at the feet of Trump, who “authorized this assault” on the Capitol.
“It was a plot, it was a scheme, it was a conspiracy… that began at the highest levels of our government,” Shamansky argued.
Thompson and other “vulnerable” Trump supporters like him “believed the lies that were fed to them” in the months leading up to Jan. 6, Shamansky argued. Thompson was “predisposed” to “this lunacy,” Shamansky said, but losing his job at the beginning of the Covid pandemic left him sitting at home to digest the “garbage” that Trump and his supporters were spreading.
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“This is the garbage that Dustin Thompson is listening to,” Shamansky argued. “Donald Trump encouraged people like Dustin Thompson to storm the Capitol.”
The question for jurors to answer, Shamansky argued, wasn’t whether Thompson stormed the U.S. Capitol — “he most certainly did,” Shamansky conceded — but “why.”
Shamansky, who argued Tuesday that Trump took part in a “sinister, disgusting” plot to overturn the election results, had tried to subpoena the former president at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, according to a prior court filing, but was turned away by a person believed to be with the U.S. Secret Service.
Trump has said he is not responsible for the actions of the rioters that day, and sought to blame others who were at the U.S. Capitol.
Nearly 800 people have been charged in connection with the attack on the U.S. Capitol, and almost 250 have pleaded guilty. There are hundreds of additional cases in the works.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
