A federal judge on Thursday slammed former President Donald Trump as a “charlatan who only cares about power” after a jury found Capitol rioter Dustin Thompson guilty on all six charges he faced for his role in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — including felony obstruction of Congress.
Thompson attempted to justify his actions by blaming Trump’s campaign of disinformation about the election results for his conduct that day. But the jury slapped him with a guilty verdict on all counts, according to Politico.
As noted by Politico, “the verdict is the third conviction in three jury trials for the Justice Department and represents a significant validation of prosecutors’ effort to separate the actions of individual participants in the Jan. 6 insurrection from the attempts by Donald Trump to subvert the election results.”
After the verdict, U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton tore into Trump for his efforts to dupe supporters into believing the election was stolen.
“I think our democracy is in trouble because, unfortunately, we have charlatans like our former president who doesn’t, in my view, really care about democracy but only about power,” Walton said.
But he reserved his harshest comments for Thompson, whom he described as “weak-minded” and part of a “gullible” throng of Trump backers who couldn’t separate his claims from reality. Walton ordered Thompson immediately detained, forgoing the typical release of defendants until their sentencing.
“The inevitable reality is that whether he does time now or does time later, he’s got to do time,” Walton said just before ordering him to jail.
Read it on Politico.
