The Press in Washington | Vigil for the “Jan6ers”

(Washington, DC) Tonight, like every evening, around twenty will gather at “Freedom Corner”, in front of the District of Columbia prison, in support of the “Jan6ers”.

Jan6 as in January 6, 2021.

About twenty detainees arrested for the invasion of the Capitol are still in this prison center in southeast Washington, awaiting their trial or sentence. Around 7:30 p.m., like every evening, they will telephone the “patriots” who have come to support them, and their voices will be heard over the loudspeakers.

There is good news for them. The day before, the Supreme Court heard the case of some of the January 6 convicts. If comments from judges, including “progressive” Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, are anything to go by, there is a good chance that charges will be brought against hundreds of them – a thousand people have been charged with various crimes for three years. It would not overturn the main criminal convictions, but it would deflate several indictments, including the one against Donald Trump.

The first to arrive at the “vigil” is Roger, a 67-year-old guy from North Dakota who worked in all professions after the army to end up as a cook in a deli. He actually moved to Washington and has been coming here every evening for 626 days, rain or shine…

Then Rebecca arrives, a Chinese-American who emigrated after the Tiananmen Square massacre. “I did not leave China to experience the dictatorship in the United States! », she explains to me. She voted for Barack Obama, disowned him, and finds that the significance of January 6 has been greatly exaggerated.

The two set up their phones on a tripod. Because each vigil is broadcast live on social networks. A live stream which has its followers around the world, says Roger.

But clearly, there are people here or in the webosphere who are monitoring them, because as soon as I got home, I received an anonymous message on X saying to be wary of these “horrible” people.

A guy like Roy, a retiree who regularly drives four hours from Pennsylvania to come here for a few days, doesn’t have any “horrible” markings.

Yes, there was a little violence on January 6, 2021, and people did harm, he concedes. “But many didn’t know what was happening, there was incredible confusion. » He suspects “agents provocateurs”. Others speak of “actors”. And then, in any case, being a Christian also means forgiving, says Roy.

The meeting begins with a prayer. Everyone holds hands and Roy addresses God for “the end of tyranny in this country.” They will then take the oath of allegiance to the Constitution.

Because for the people gathered here, most of the people imprisoned are political prisoners, victims of a vendetta by the federal state.

Or “hostages”, as Donald Trump says, who promises to pardon them if he is elected. Because if the political condemnation of this insurrection was unanimous at the start, a fringe of the Republican Party is showing itself more and more openly sympathetic to the condemned, minimizing what happened, or outright legitimizing it: they were defending the integrity of the ‘election. Florida Representative Matt Gaetz has already come to support them in person.

The two founders of this event are Micki Witthoeft and Nicole Reffitt.

M’s daughter^me Witthoeft, Ashli ​​Babbitt, a former member of the United States Air Force, was shot at point blank range when she tried to enter the Capitol through a barricaded door. For her mother, it’s murder, and she is here to demand justice. The police officer, who warned the demonstrators to move back, was cleared after an investigation. But his critics, who are not all conspiracy theorists, noted that M^me Babbitt was not armed and the other police officers present did not shoot.

Three other demonstrators and a police officer died that day, but either from heart attacks, strokes or overdoses. No one has been charged with homicide.

“If I had known, I would have tied her to the sofa,” Ashli’s mother told me. But she had the right to be there. »

She insists that permits had been obtained to demonstrate in support of Donald Trump – lying about several reports. It’s a simple demonstration gone wrong, to hear it.

“I don’t think they’re all innocent, but they didn’t deserve such harsh sentences,” she said of the prisoners.

Guy Reffitt was a recruiting member of the “Three Percenters,” a far-right group formed after the election of Obama, which fears gun control and the influence of the federal government. Why “3%”? Because apparently only 3% of American colonists took up arms against the British during the Revolutionary War; they see themselves as the heirs of these first patriots.

Mr. Reffitt was imprisoned for a long time in the prison before us. Since his sentence, he is now serving his sentence in a federal penitentiary in another state.

Nicole, his wife, nevertheless continues the fight here.

“He never entered the building, and all you see in the photos is a holster, not a gun,” she said. At trial, however, evidence was given of his encouragement to invade the building and take out the Democrats to put them on trial.

The Reffitt affair also became famous because the couple’s son publicly declared having denounced his father’s violent intentions to the FBI, even before the events of January 6, 2021. The federal police, heavily armed, came to arrest the father a few days after the insurrection, at dawn.

His wife is not wrong to say that the prosecution wanted to make an example of this first jury verdict. Even though he had not been convicted of this crime, the prosecutor requested an exceptional sentence for terrorist activity, which the magistrate refused, ruling that seven years and three months’ imprisonment was sufficient.

It’s 8 p.m. The loudspeakers are on: inmate Christopher Quaglin addresses the group. The 37-year-old man was convicted of several violent acts committed on January 6, 2021 and is awaiting sentencing. Federal prosecutors are seeking 14 years in prison.

He speaks of the end of the republic, of the desire of the deep state to “destroy borders”. The real audience is not the twenty or so “patriots” present here, but the hundreds, thousands perhaps, who listen to the vigil on the Internet.

Lawyer Paloma Capanna speaks. She explains that 350 January 6 defendants face a charge that could fall, that of having obstructed the work of a federal agency. This accusation comes from a law passed after the Enron financial scandal, which destroyed compromising documents before the FBI could get their hands on them. The law was not designed for cases like January 6, and is far too broad, several judges said on the day of the hearing last week.

She doesn’t deny that crimes were committed, but these additional charges are a “theatrical” technique, or the prosecution’s “fireworks,” she tells me.

If, as is expected, the Supreme Court invalidates the use of this law for rioters, the bulk of criminal convictions will remain, but hundreds of charges will fall. This will confirm the impression that federal justice “overcharged” the insurgents, to exaggerate the seriousness of their crimes.

It would not be the first time that American prosecutors have added more, but in the politically charged context, it would give one more argument to Donald Trump, for whom there has been “persecution” against the “Jan6ers » and, above all, towards him…

We brought in some pizza. There are hot drinks, music and American flags. Some people brought their folding chairs to listen to all this.

Jail call time is limited. Everyone packs up their things and leaves quietly, arranging to meet up.

Tomorrow. And the day after tomorrow…