Capitol Rioter Says Trump Gave Permission To Storm Capitol, Gets Immediately Convicted

A Capitol Rioter will be headed to prison soon after a court soundly rejected his legal defense that Trump gave him (and everyone else) permission to storm the Capitol. These rioters don't seem to understand that permission or not, storming the building was 100% illegal and they are responsible for their own actions. But there is a silver lining with these defenses and it could cost Trump dearly, as Farron Cousins explains.

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

A maga Rioter who was present, of course on January 6th, stormed his way into the capitol, was seen on video, posted on social media, basically lined up nicely. All of the evidence against him was convicted last week. He's a 23 year old man from the state of Ohio. But his defense is what I want to talk about. Not just that good, you got another Capitol riot or headed to prison because he was convicted of a felony charge and then a bunch of misdemeanor charges. But it was the defense. This man, Alexander Shepherd, had his legal team go into court and argue that Donald Trump himself, who at the time was president of the United States, gave this man and everybody else there that day permission to storm the capitol, to interrupt that proceeding of Congress where they were certifying the electoral college vote. Donald Trump gave them permission, is what the lawyers said. Here it is. Um, he claimed that Trump had given him legal permission to go into the Capitol building on January 6th. US District Court Judge John Bates cited the House Select committee report. In slapping down the argument, Trump telling his supporters to fight like hell while also encouraging them to march to the Capitol could signal to protestors that entering the capitol and stopping certification would be unlawful.

So just because Trump gave you permission, the judge is saying doesn't mean that it's legal still. Like if Trump said, go rob that bank because that's where the money is, and you're like, oh, okay, yeah, you, you, you still robbed a bank, like you're still gonna go to jail because what he's telling you to do is still illegal. So permission or not, it's still illegal. The president does not have the authority to overturn the laws here in the United States. You the, the whole separation of of Powers thing, he can't, he can't do that. And that's the kind of thing that a lot of these capitol rioters don't seem to understand. That even if the President tells you to do something illegal, it's still illegal because they cannot unilateral unilaterally overturn that law. And even if they could, he technically didn't even do that. So not much of a legal argument, but I tell you who's paying real close attention to all of these claims from these Capitol rioters, it's the folks who have filed the civil lawsuit against Donald Trump. Now, this past week, uh, the courts did rule that Donald Trump, the civil lawsuits against him by the Capitol police officers can go forward. Those Capitol

Riot lawsuits from the Capitol police officers against Donald Trump and several others are alleging that the injuries they suffered were because of what Donald Trump did that day. So in order to prove that Donald Trump is responsible for their injuries, all they have to point to are these defenses from these capitol rioters. Because again, for the Capitol rioters themselves, they can make these claims. It doesn't change whether or not what they did was legal or illegal. All they have to prove in the civil lawsuits is that these people believed Trump gave them the orders to do this. Do you see the difference there? So the more these people make these claims, and we have seen dozens of them say that Trump gave us permission, Trump told us to, every one of those can be used in this civil suit to prove that Donald Trump, his words, inspired the actions of those people.

These civil lawsuits got a huge boost with this most recent conviction and with everyone before it, because they can and will use all of that testimony, all of those defenses, to prove that these Capitol rioters truly believed Trump told them to do this, and that's why they suffered injuries. That's why this story is so important. It's the part of the story. Unfortunately, I see a lot of media outlets not connecting the dots with, but trust me, when those trials start, you're gonna see all these arguments come back, and it's gonna hurt Donald Trump in the end.