Richard Barnett trial: Man who put feet on Pelosi’s desk during Jan. 6 attack appears in court
Barnini Chakraborty
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The trial of Richard Barnett, the Arizona man photographed in former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office with his foot on a desk during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, is slated to start Monday after a nearly two-year delay.
Barnett faces eight federal charges, including taking a stun gun into the Capitol, theft of government property, and obstructing Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote count in the 2020 presidential election. He initially had seven charges against him, but prosecutors on Dec. 21 added the eighth charge of civil disorder. He faces a year behind bars if found guilty.
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The trial is expected to last a week.
Barnett, who goes by the nickname Bigo, bragged about writing Pelosi “a nasty note” and putting “my feet up on her desk.” He also took letterhead from the speaker’s office, waving it around, but insisted he did not steal it because he “put a quarter on her desk.”
Barnett was arrested on Jan. 8, 2021.
Since then, he has assembled one of the largest defense teams for an individually charged defendant tied to the 2021 attack. One of his lawyers, Bradford Geyer, is a former federal prosecutor who represented Oath Keeper Kenneth Harrelson at his trial. Harrelson was acquitted in November of seditious conspiracy for his role in the attack but was found guilty of obstructing an official proceeding of Congress and on other lesser charges. Two of the charges he was found guilty of carry a maximum 20-year prison sentence, while the third carries a six-year maximum sentence.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office has made more than 900 arrests in connection to the Jan. 6 attack. About 440 have already pleaded guilty to various charges, and 29 have been found guilty in trials.
Last year, former President Donald Trump pledged he would offer full pardons to anyone convicted in connection to the U.S. Capitol attack if he was reelected to office in 2024.
“Full pardons with an apology to many,” he told conservative radio host Wendy Bell in September. “It’s a disgrace what they’ve done to them. What they’ve done to these people is disgraceful.”
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The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack recommended barring Trump from ever holding office again in its final report, which was based on more than 1,000 interviews, emails, texts, and phone records. The committee, in its last public meeting, referred Trump to the Department of Justice on at least four criminal charges.
The move was largely symbolic and not binding.