White supremacist MAGA rioter argues he shouldn't be judged by people whose city he 'wrecked'
On Tuesday, CBS News' Scott MacFarlane reported that a top-level defendant in the January 6 Capitol insurrection, Timothy Hale-Cusanelli of New York, is requesting that his trial be moved outside of D.C. — because he claims he won't be able to get a fair trial from jurors from the city his group threatened and attacked.
"Washington, D.C. was wrecked by the riot on 6 January 2021, and the riot impacted the transportation and safety of District of Columbia residents beyond that date," said the filing. "As such, public sentiment to any participant, willing or not, in the riot, cannot be positive, nor can a jury composed of the region's residents be wholly impartial."
Several other defendants in January 6 cases have made similar arguments. Kyle Fitzsimmons asked for his trial to be moved to his home state of Maine because D.C. jurors will have been "barraged with political propaganda" calling him a racist. And Thomas Caldwell, a member of the far-right militia group the Oath Keepers charged in the attack, claimed that he can't be tried fairly in D.C. because its residents "despise" the values of "traditional America."
READ: Trump’s mysterious last recorded phone call before the Jan. 6 riot was to an ‘unidentified person’
So far, judges have not been swayed by these arguments. Judge Amit P. Mehta slammed Caldwell's lawyer, David Fischer, for advancing that argument for his client, saying it "reads less like a legal brief and more [like] something on a blog."
Hale-Cusanelli, who is accused of waving in other rioters to breach the Capitol, is a white supremacist activist who ran a podcast blaming the Jews for 9/11 and defending Adolf Hitler, even going so far as to sport a Hitler mustache.
At the same time, he served as an Army Reservist and worked as a security contractor with "secret" level clearance at Naval Weapons Station Earle in Colts Neck, New Jersey, although. One sailor who worked with him claims he bragged if he had been in Nazi Germany, he "would kill all the Jews" and eat them in a seasoning of their own tears. He was demoted and discharged after news of his involvement in the attack.
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