Judge Smacks Down Capitol Rioter's Lawyer For 'Crazy' Defense

A District Judge hearing a case involving an accused Capitol rioter got into a heated exchange with the defendant's lawyer last week, after the lawyer tried to argue that Donald Trump "incited" his client to storm the Capitol. The judge told the lawyer that this isn't a defense, and that it was "crazy" to say such a thing. Farron Cousins talks about the exchange between the judge and lawyer and what it means for future trials.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

Last week, there was a very tense exchange that took place in a courtroom where a capital riot defendant's lawyer kind of got a little smack down by the judge. Here is how the exchange took place. According to Kyle Chaney from Politico, the lawyer said our president was inciting some people to do this. And the judge judge Emmitt Sullivan fired back and said, but that's not a defense. The devil made me do it. So I did it. That's crazy. This wasn't protestation, this was illegal conduct. They assaulted the American democracy. This is crazy. That's crazy. Those are the words coming from this judge Emett Sullivan for this lawyer's defense, like literally telling the defendant's lawyer, your argument's crazy. Oh, Trump wanted us to do it and got us all riled up. So we did it. Sure. That may have been the case. Still not an excuse, right?

You can't just claim, Hey dude, over here got me. So worked up, you know, that I went and killed him. Cool. You still killed him. So you kind of still did the crime, but it does show owe you of course, how pathetic these defenses are. And to be honest, I do not blame these lawyers, right? You can only work with what you're given and these lawyers and to their credit, right? These defense lawyers have done a phenomenal job of representing these individuals, knowing how difficult it is to defend what is ostensibly the indefensible, you know, they can only work with what they've been given and they have not been given very much to work with at all. So that is why, of course, they resort to these kinds of defenses. You know, we know that you did it, you're on video doing this. You bragged about it on social media.

Heck you're the one book, the videos, and then bragged about it on social media. So we can't exactly say you didn't do it. So what we have to do these lawyers, you know, tell their clients is we have to come up with a reason why you did it. That somehow takes the blame off of you. Now that for any lawyer, no matter how skilled you are is in fact, a Herculean feet, you know, knowing that your client and the court, knowing that the client is automatically guilty because of the video evidence, everything is stacked against you at this point. And I think that's kind of why judge Sullivan started getting so annoyed with it. You know, he knows that is probably the only defense these lawyers can give, but at the same time, Sullivan is tired of hearing it. We have seen story after story, after story of these defense lawyers and the defendants going into these courtrooms,

Knowing they did it. Everybody having seen the videos of them doing it. So we know they're guilty, but still trying to pin the blame on Donald Trump saying, I can't be held responsible for my actions, cuz heck I'm just the, the poor lowly little, you know, cult victim may be true, but it's still not a legal defense. And apparently sure as hell not something that's going to fly in judge Sullivan's courtroom. So let that be a lesson to all the capital riot defendants out there. And of course the defense lawyers, Trump may have been the one that made these people do these things, but at the end of the day, they still did 'em and they're still gonna be punished for it.