A federal judge on Monday hammered Donald Trump, invoking former Vice President Al Gore to imply that the former president is not a real man for lying to his supporters about voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election in order to justify his defeat to President Joe Biden.
“Al Gore had a better case to argue than Mr. Trump, but he was a man about what happened to him. He accepted it and walked away,” Senior District Judge Reggie Walton said of Gore’s decision to end his presidential bid following weeks of legal battles.
Walton’s comments came during a plea hearing for Capitol riot defendant Adam Johnson, who was photographed carrying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s lectern through the Capitol building, according to CNN.
During the hearing, Johnson told Walton that he accepted responsibility for getting “caught up in the moment,” and said that a “hard couple of years” led him to spend a lot of time “listening to a lot of information and reading things” online, the report says.
Prosecutors allege that Johnson started running to the Capitol building from the “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse after someone in the crowd shouted “Pence didn’t do it!” Johnson admitted that he brought a knife with him to Washington, but discarded it in the bushes on his way to the Capitol, the news network reported.
“Once inside the building Johnson wandered around until he came across Pelosi’s office suite. He jiggled a door handle, prosecutors say, but it was locked. He then grabbed the lectern and carried it to the Capitol rotunda, posing for several pictures along the way,” the report continues.
At one point, Johnson said that a nearby bust of George Washington would be a “great battering ram” to get through the doors to the chamber, according to court documents.
Johnson, who was originally charged with three federal crimes including theft of government property, could face a sentence of up to six months in prison, according to his agreement with prosecutors. He will also pay $500 in restitution for damage done to the Capitol during the riot, according to the report.
