Chief U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell was unpersuaded by a Proud Boys member’s claim he was heeding the then-president’s direction by storming Congress.
A federal judge is signaling that she’s not a big fan of an increasingly common defense emerging from lawyers for those charged in the Capitol Riot: President Donald Trump made me do it.
At a bail hearing Tuesday for a Proud Boy member from Kansas accused of storming the Capitol, Chief U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell said she was dubious about the legal merit of the effort to shift blame toward the former president and his inflammatory rhetoric about the election.
“This purported defense, if recognized, would undermine the rule of law,” Howell said during the videoconference court session for William Chrestman, 47. “Then, just like a king or a dictator, the president could dictate what would be legal and what isn’t in this country, and that is not how we operate here.”
Lawyers for Chrestman pointed to several Supreme Court cases that they said indicated that guidance from government officials can sometimes be a defense against criminal charges. They said Trump’s encouragement amounted to that kind of all-clear for those who forced their way into the Capitol during the counting of Electoral College votes on Jan. 6.
“Only someone who thought they had an official endorsement would even attempt such a thing. And a Proud Boy who had been paying attention would very much believe he did,” Chrestman’s lawyers, Kirk Redmond and Chekasha Ramsey, wrote in a court filing last week.
The defense attorneys also cited Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s statement following Trump’s impeachment trial that those who besieged the Capitol “believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their President.”
Howell called the defense argument “quite interesting,” but it quickly became clear she was deeply skeptical of its legal merit. Raising Trump’s famous comment during the 2016 campaign that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue in New York City and get away with it, she asked the defense lawyers to appreciate the implications of their position.
“If President Trump ordered or instructed a member of the Proud Boys [to] go off and murder somebody and someone went off and did that, it follows that … would immunize them from liability for that criminal act? … In effect, isn’t that what your argument is saying?” the judge asked Redmond.
“I don’t think so. … It’s not going to extend to every defendant,” Redmond replied.
Howell said a 1965 Supreme Court case that Chrestman’s team cited, Cox v. Louisiana, involved an issue of where protesters could stand on a sidewalk and was nothing akin to shutting down a joint session of Congress. “In this case, I would say an instruction from a federal official to disrupt a constitutionally mandated function is far different from a traffic kind of administrative decision,” the judge said.
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Chief U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell was unpersuaded by Proud Boys member William Chrestman's claim he was heeding Trump's orders by storming Congress. https://t.co/XkTEAq2goN
— POLITICO (@politico) February 23, 2021
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