Politico senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney found himself baffled by some of the arguments being made by an attorney representing Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola on Wednesday during the opening of his trial on seditious conspiracy charges.
As Cheney reports on Twitter, attorney Roger Roots played jurors a video of Pezzola in the United States Capitol building on January 6th, 2021, in which he boasted that "I knew we could take this motherf*cker."
Roots then said that this clip should become known as "the not guilty video," which prompted Cheney to post a confused "shrug" emoji in response.
Law and Crime News' Marisa Sarnoff added some context to Roots' remarks, as she noted that Roots was trying to argue that the video showed Pezzola's goal was simply to take over the Capitol, not to block the peaceful transfer of presidential power.
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Cheney also reports that Roots tried to downplay the severity of the riots at the Capitol, which he dismissed as merely "a six-hour delay of Congress, from 2 o'clock to 8 o'clock."
In addition to that, Roots said that jurors needed to see the full context about a video showing Pezzola smashing a window at the Capitol, and he played a longer video clip to jurors that Cheney says "does not look better for his client."
