Reagan-appointed judge stresses lasting impact of Jan. 6 while sentencing rioter banking on Trump pardon
A federal judge appointed by former President Ronald Reagan said the public discourse about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and the cases against Donald Trump supporters prosecuted because they committed crimes in support of the once and future president had been distorted.
WASHINGTON — A federal judge appointed to the bench by former President Ronald Reagan said Friday that the public discourse about the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — and the cases against Donald Trump supporters prosecuted because they committed crimes in support of the once and future president — had been distorted.
U.S. District Court Royce Lamberth said Friday that while the events of Jan. 6 may be a "distant, hazy memory" for many Americans, that there were many who suffered that day who never forget the attack and emphasized that “truth and justice, law and order” were bedrock principles of the judicial system. The jurors who heard the cases, Lamberth said, "know how perilously close we came to letting the peaceful transfer of power, that great cornerstone of the American republican experiment and perhaps our foremost contribution to posterity, slip away from us."
Lamberth — who had previously said the "preposterous" claims Republican politicians were making about the Capitol attack "could presage further danger to our country" — made his comments during the sentencing of a man who ran for a congressional seat previously held by former Rep. George Santos.
Philip Grillo had been convicted of a felony count of obstruction of an official proceeding, but after the Supreme Court's decision on that count over the summer, Grillow filed a motion for acquittal on the felony count, which the government did not oppose. So on Friday, Grillo was sentenced to a year in prison on the remaining misdemeanor counts.
“We f---ing did it, you understand? We stormed the Capitol,” Grillo said in a video he took of himself in the Capitol, according to the Justice Department. “We shut it down! We did it!”
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