Accused Capitol Rioter Wants Trump To Testify That He Ordered Them To Storm Capitol

An accused Capitol Rioter is asking the court to issue a subpoena to force Donald Trump to testify at the trial so that he can explain that he was the one who told the rioters to storm the Capitol building. While this endeavor is likely to fail, it does raise an interesting legal question about both liability and responsibility. If the rioter genuinely believes that Trump is responsible, it would make perfect sense for the judge to grant the subpoena. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

An accused Capitol rioter on Friday, submitted a petition to the court overseeing his trial, to subpoena Donald Trump and according to this, his, his co-conspirators for their testimony in this ongoing trial. The accused rioter is a man by the name of Dustin Thompson for Ohio and I say accused of course, because he has only been charged. He has not been found guilty yet. He has been accused or charged with a number of offenses in the storming of the Capitol, including obstruction of an official proceeding, theft of government property, disorder, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building and disorderly conduct in the Capitol. So he's got a lot of charges against him and of course, obstruction of a federal proceeding, that one carries a, a rather hefty penalty with it.

And that of course is what prosecutors had said they were going to start charging these people with starting this year. They were gonna get tougher on these folks. Mr. Thompson here appears to be one of those people that things are getting tougher for. But Mr. Thompson and his legal team say that he did what he did because Donald Trump and his allies, those other people at that rally, told them to. And in fact, in their court filing, they used these quotes. Well, let me read the whole thing. In order to accomplish that goal, which was to overturn the election, the conspirators defendant now seeks to subpoena engaged in a concerted effort to organize, encourage and direct rally participants to storm the Capitol, enter the grounds, quote, fight like hell and quote, engage in trial by combat. Fight like hell is what Donald Trump said. Trial by combat is what Rudy Giuliani said. And I have to be honest, they make a pretty good case.

After all, it would make sense, if this Capitol rioter does in fact believe that Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, or anyone else at that stop the steal rally that morning, if he thinks genuinely they told him to do this, that they gave him directions to do this, they should be called to testify. I mean, hell the man's freedom is on the line. I'm not excusing what he did at all, but I would think our justice system would really wanna make sure that we flesh this thing out wholly and completely. And again, he's still going to probably go to jail no matter what happens. But I think that bringing in Trump to testify, bringing in Giuliani to testify, it's beyond time for that to happen. These Capitol rioters increasingly and it does appear to be a bit of a concerted effort are blaming all of this on Trump. They're using his own words against him. They are saying that he is the one who got them all riled up to go and storm the Capitol.

So it's time that one of these judges agrees and says, you know what, fine call him in to testify. Let's get him on the record. Let's see what he has to say when the pressure is on him. It's not gonna change the sentencing really for any of these Capitol riot defendants. But it is going to put the spotlight on the words that Donald Trump spoke in a way that we haven't seen yet publicly. Sure, we have lawsuits going on in Washington, DC, directly addressing the words he used. We have the Capitol riot committee that knows the words he used and they're looking into it. But we need this more public than that and we need it sooner than that.