Jury convicts Jan. 6 defendant who blamed Trump for Capitol breach

“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 held.

He added that he considered Thompson a flight risk because he tried to flee the police on Jan. 6 after they began to question him about his theft of a coat tree from a Capitol office. Walton also said he didn’t think Thompson was candid during his testimony, when he took the stand to try to explain his actions.

The case presented a tightrope for prosecutors as the Justice Department continues to investigate figures in Trump’s orbit for their roles in motivating and stoking the conditions that led to the mob attack on the Capitol. A slew of defendants have argued in court filings that they took their cues from Trump that day, interpreting his call to “fight like hell” against the results of the 2020 election as a command to storm the Capitol. Thompson made that claim the centerpiece of his defense.

In closing arguments, Assistant U.S. Attorney William Dreher called Thompson’s argument a “sideshow” meant to whip up the jury’s anger at Trump rather than focus on the obvious violations of law that Thompson committed.

“Defense counsel wants you to focus so much on what President Trump said on the morning of Jan. 6. He wants you to forget what his client did on the afternoon of Jan. 6,” Dreher said.

“He wants you to think you have to choose between President Trump and his client, Mr. Thompson, right? That you can only find that one of them committed a crime that day or that one of them is worse than the other,” Dreher continued. “Ladies and gentlemen, you don’t have to choose.”

Trump’s ability to influence his supporters to march on and breach the Capitol has been a focus of the Jan. 6 select committee in Congress. It has pointed to claims from defendants like Thompson — as well as Trump’s lengthy silence during the riot — as evidence that the former president bears singular, perhaps criminal, responsibility for the violence that broke out that day.

Dreher didn’t contradict that narrative but urged jurors to set it aside.

“This is not president Trump’s criminal trial,” he said. “It is not up to you to decide whether anyone other than the defendant should be prosecuted for any of the crimes charged. The fact that another person may also be guilty is no defense of a criminal charge. The question of the possible guilt of others should not enter your thinking.”

Thompson was convicted on six charges: obstruction of an official proceeding — which carries a maximum 20-year sentence — as well as theft of government property, entering and remaining in a restricted building, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building, disorderly conduct in the Capitol, and parading in the Capitol. The jury deliberated for about three hours.

In Thompson’s closing argument, attorney Samuel Shamansky appealed to the jury to consider “human nature.” He reminded them that Thompson had spent nearly a year out of work before Jan. 6, isolated amid the pandemic and consuming a firehose of pro-Trump disinformation and propaganda.

Shamansky didn’t dispute the bulk of the factual case presented by prosecutors: Thompson entered the Capitol after Trump’s speech, joined a mob in ransacking the Senate parliamentarian’s office and stole a coat rack and bottle of liquor during the unrest. He stood by as rioters assaulted police in a Capitol tunnel and ran away from officers that evening when they approached him to ask about the coat rack.

But Shamansky urged the jury to consider the “mental” impact that Trump’s words had over time.

“He consumed these lies and this misinformation,” Shamansky said, calling Trump an “evil and sinister man who would stop at nothing to get his way on Jan. 6.” Shamansky described Thompson as a “pawn” in Trump’s “sick game” to remain in power.

“In your hearts, in your heads,” Shamansky said to the jury, “do the right thing.”

The arguments capped a trial in which there was unusually broad agreement between prosecutors and the defense attorneys about the defendant’s conduct. Thompson took the stand to argue that he was in Trump’s thrall when he committed the actions he took, but acknowledged knowing that they were wrong at the time.

Thompson’s wife also testified that she witnessed her husband become increasingly radicalized during Trump’s presidency, and that it became particularly acute when he became unemployed in March 2020.