The trial of Dominic Pezzola, one of the defendants of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach, was paused on Thursday due to classified FBI messages revealed in court, which the defense attorneys say show FBI agents discussing the altering of evidence.
Pezzola is one of the Proud Boys members on trial for obstruction and conspiracy charges related to the Jan. 6 Capitol breach. He was arrested on Jan. 15, 2021, and indicted the same month. Pezzola’s trial began in January of this year.
“There are a couple of emails between FBI agents casually discussing altering a document and destroying hundreds of pieces of evidence. It’s very disturbing and right now we have more questions than answers,” Roots wrote. Roots confirmed that Washington District Court Judge Timothy J. Kelly, a Trump appointee, paused the trial on Thursday due to the leaked messages.
When cross-examining Miller, Nick Smith, an attorney representing Proud Boys member Ethan Nordean (listed as co-defendant on Pezzola’s case), revealed classified FBI emails that were hidden in a tab in an Excel spreadsheet. Roots, in Pezzola’s case, used this evidence to support a motion to dismiss (pdf) the charges against Pezzola, which Roots’s team filed on Wednesday.
In the motion, Pezzola’s team said the emails showed that the FBI was monitoring communications between Nordean and his lawyer, violating the Sixth Amendment, which prohibits invasions of the right to counsel (Matter of Fusco v. Moses).
“In the Nordean case, confidential attorneys-client trial/defense strategy and position was wrongfully obtained by the government, about which was overheard, shared, utilized, where potentially ‘338 items of evidence’ were ordered to be ‘destroyed,’ said Pezzola’s legal team in the motion to dismiss.
According to a separate filing by Nordean’s lawyers, Miller said in one correspondence that “[her] boss assigned [her] 338 items of evidence [she has] to destroy”; Nordean’s lawyers allege that another email show an agent requesting Miller to “go into [a] CHS [informant] report” that Miller “just put [together] and edit out that [the agent] was present.”
The emails show Miller “admitted fabricating evidence and following orders to destroy hundreds of items of evidence,” Pezzola’s lawyers wrote in its motion to dismiss, and that the government obtained information that benefitted itself in the trial, causing substantial prejudice to each of the defendants, including Pezzola.
“If justice means anything, it requires this case to be dismissed,” Pezzola’s lawyer said.
Roots, an attorney at John Pierce Law, is representing Pezzola on a pro bono basis. Legal non-profit National Constitutional Law Union (NCLU) is helping cover Roots’s expenses while he is in Washington, according to NCLU Executive Director Natalie Danelishen.
“My thoughts are we need a longer pause to get to the bottom of some of Agent Miller’s emails,” Roots told The Epoch Times.
As of Thursday evening, the court has not issued an order responding to the motion to dismiss.
Alleged Brady Violations
In addition to their argument about the Sixth Amendment, Pezzola’s lawyers also argued in their motion to dismiss that newly surfaced footage of events of the Jan. 6 Capitol breach constitutes exculpatory evidence. The defendants’ lawyers say the government, by withholding that evidence, violated their client’s constitutional rights as defined in Brady v. Maryland, a 1963 case in which the Supreme Court held that prosecutors must make available exculpatory evidence to defense counsel.
The defendants’ motion comes two days after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) released more than 40,000 hours of Jan. 6 footage to Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, who then aired some of the footage on his show on Monday and Tuesday.
One tape aired Monday showed Capitol Police officers walking alongside Jacob Chansley, a Jan. 6 defendant serving a 41-month sentence after pleading guilty to an obstruction charge. Chansley was unarmed and walked past several Capitol police officers.
The aired footage “is plainly exculpatory,” Pezzola’s lawyers said in the motion.
The FBI declined to comment and referred The Epoch Times to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for comment.
U.S. Attorney’s Office did not provide The Epoch Times with comment by press time.
More revealing truth that FBI men designed to be untouchable, got touched by a demonic Democrat party spirit of unfair power playing, and manipulation of individual outcomes that lead to the proofs of intended collective stolen elections. They who would alter evidence in trials of individuals would not hesitate to collectively alter votes to create an artificial outcome that secures power to the perverts, not power to THE PEOPLE. If emails showed that the FBI was monitoring communications between Nordean and his lawyer, were they monitoring actual counted votes to be able to change that outcome as well, laying a heavy hand not just on the scales of American justice, but the very outcomes of elections which determine who has the power, and who redistributes it to whom, in financial funding, and proposed maladministration’s.
I can’t see how anyone CANNOT SEE, that the FBI, from the bottom, to the top, is TOTALLY AND UTTERLY corrupt, and needs to be shut the hell down..
“We’ll make you guilty if we want you guilty”/
It would appear that the FBI agents are nothing but the Democrat Party’s political officers of their Nazi Gestapo.
Hence why i SUPPORT ANY and all efforts, to defund them!
Every conviction connected to the Jan 6 kangaroo committee should be evacuated now. Every person awaiting trial must have all charges dismissed now. And then we must go after, with a vengeance, all those sitting on that committee and their staffs and 3 letter agencies.
I second that motion.
I agree with you, should these allegations prove to be true, every conviction of Jan 6 defendants, as well as pending charges against the nearly 1000 others, should be vacated. One caveat, though, anyone who actually did engage in violent behavior should still face consequences, but perhaps not as severe as would otherwise be recommended, per these newest revelations.
Once that’s done, every member of the Jan 6th committee should be investigated and held to account – multi-year prison sentences with no chance of parole, for starters.
Combined with this, all relevant federal agencies involved should either be defunded, dismantled, or the entire lot should be summarily fired and suitable replacements found.
ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, et al, should be required to cover all hearings, trials, etc, so that the largest number of Americans possible can see just what their corrupt government’s been up to.
Unless all parties involved are held to serious account, and soon, I fear the America we once knew will be lost forever.
On those “federal agencies”, even if we DO fire some, the entire org is too rotten, imo, so any replacements we get, will just tend to wind up like those fired.
America is in serious trouble when the police (fed, state or local) manipulate, hide, alter a/o fabricate evidence. I previously thought the FBI was only corrupt at the top levels, but I’m beginning to believe now that it’s corrupt from top to bottom so the only thing that may save it is to go full scorched earth: fire them all & start over.
U.S. Atty’s Office did not provide The Epoch Times with comment by press time. Refusing or failing to provide comment speaks volumes.
There needs to be very severe consequences for the FBI agents and their supervisors who manipulate, hide, alter a/o fabricate evidence.
Like to end up in prison!!!
This FBI has become just a political arm of the corrupt, treasonous, destructive, unethical, immoral, woke, socialist Democrat Party.
IT just goes to show HOW DEEP the rot lies..
Ahh, alas, I agree, but as the Roman poet, Juvenal opined, “Who will guard the guards?”
Replacing the government’s 3-letter agencies, such as the FBI, CIA, etc, sounds great on the surface, but what’s to keep them from again becoming as corrupt as they appear to be now?
The only way to ensure that, methinks, is a constitutional amendment, some other legal statute, and strict term limits for all government officials, from SCOTUS, to the judiciary at large, the House, Senate, and so on.
Our founders gave us a system which is supposed to protect against that, but that was in a time and place where people are far more virtuous than they are today.
In the short term, our only hope is that enough principled Republicans can keep the House, gain a sizable majority in the Senate, and get the White House as well. Barring that, I fear it’s an uphill battle.
IMO the only way, is Better oversight, and term limits on those who work for those orgs.. JUST LIKE there needs to be term limits for those in office.
After seeing the videos of Jan 6 from Carlton tucker they are all Innocent I wish me Tucker would release all the video
Let us NOT FORGET THAT the ONLY PERSON MURDERED that fateful day was ASHLEY BABBITT AND SHE WAS MURDERED BY A CAPITOL policeman……GET THE FACTS STRAIGHT!!!