A top defense lawyer involved in over 50 cases stemming from the January 6 Capitol riots said the Justice Department is overreaching in its prosecution of some 1,300 cases on Tuesday, many against bystanders.
Kira Anne West, who volunteered to defend dozens of suspects, said in an interview that cases Justice would typically handle as misdemeanors are being turned into felonies and Washington juries are throwing the book at those convicted in the riots.
In a C-SPAN Booknotes podcast just posted, West said, “There is quite a bit of government overreach as far as who they’re prosecuting and what they’re charging them with.”
Interviewed by Brian Lamb, the founder of the C-SPAN Networks and C-SPAN’s former executive chairman, West said, “I’ve represented a lot of individuals who, I would say the majority of my clients, Jan. 6 clients, they have no criminal history. They did not engage in any violence on Jan. 6. Some simply went into the building, turned around, and went out. Many were in for a very short period of time, less than 20 minutes. Yet, the government is charging them with felony charges that you can get up to 20 years in prison for. That makes absolutely no sense to me.”
West told Lamb that it is unusual for so many minor cases to face federal trial. And she said it’s a waste of money.
“That kind of goes to what I said earlier about overreach. I mean, we’re spending so much money on misdemeanor cases. I think in my whole career, I’ve had one misdemeanor case in federal court before Jan. 6. Now, I have tons of them. And I’m not saying they shouldn’t be prosecuted. They should. I’m just saying, you know, to the extent that they’re prosecuted, and the discovery that goes into it, the number of hearings you have to have, it’s remarkable. So, it’s a huge economic drain, there’s no question about it,” West added.
In decrying federal “overreach,” West told Lamb that she does not defend the violence that occurred during some of the riots. “My opinion is that this is a serious crime that has to be accounted for, a very, very dark day in American history.”
Justice has threatened to charge up to 2,000 for taking part in the protests and riots leading up to the suspension of the usually uneventful certification of the results of the presidential election.
Former President Donald Trump, ousted by President Joe Biden in the 2020 election, is facing charges that he urged supporters to violence, charges he denies.
In the interview, West said that getting a fair trial in Washington is difficult because local jurors are biased to believe the prosecutors.
And she said that in some cases, prosecutors use unrelated video of the violence at the Capitol in their cases and that “it works like a charm” to win convictions.
West said she is holding out hope that the U.S. Supreme Court decides that the Justice Department has wrongly used ancient “obstruction” charges in many of the minor cases. A decision against Justice could lead to new sentences.
“When we started these Jan. 6 cases, the government starts charging all these statutes that none of us have ever seen before. I mean, most of us, I should say, 99% of us. So, our argument is, ‘Well, this doesn’t really apply to people protesting. This statute applies to people who are fixing trials or testifying falsely or obstructing an official proceeding,” she said in explaining the appeal the Supreme Court is considering.
In the interview, Lamb also asked West about the media’s coverage of the cases and what she would change.
West said that she rarely talks to the press and that while she said most reports are accurate, not all give perspective. “It’s not that they get it wrong. It’s that they don’t tell the full story all the time,” she said.
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And West said that she wishes Justice officials would give prosecutors greater flexibility in their cases.
“There’s a lot of really good prosecutors. Smart, fair, honest. And they don’t have a lot of leeway in what they decide to charge or what they decide the plea process can be. I’ve had cases where they certainly should have pled out. We made agreements. And then they go to the supervisory staff for approval, and they said, ‘No, we’re not going to do that.’ And so I wish that the line prosecutors had a little bit more autonomy in charging decisions and in plea negotiations, and that’s what I would change,” she said.