Missing Evidence in January 6 Cases Raises Concerns Among Press Coalition
Federal courts and judges have consistently mandated that any evidence or exhibits linked to January 6 cases be uploaded to an online portal. However, according to a motion filed Tuesday in federal court, some records have "disappeared" in the last week.
During its peak usage, the portal hosted tens of thousands of records, including videos, images, testimonies, audio recordings, text messages, and more.
The Press Coalition, a collective of 14 media organizations, first advocated for the preservation of all January 6 trial records in 2021. This effort resulted in a standing order requiring the Justice Department to keep video exhibits from the Capitol attack in a portal known as USAfx. Journalists and lawyers can access the portal with government authorization.
This week, however, the Press Coalition reported that video exhibits submitted for at least one Capitol riot defendant, Glen Mitchell Simon, are missing. When the group inquired with the Justice Department, the response lacked an explanation for the public inaccessibility of these judicial records, or whether other Capitol riot records previously available on USAfx had also vanished.
The motion demands that the court order the Justice Department to restore Simon's file to USAfx within 48 hours, explain the missing records, and reveal whether any other videos or documents were removed against the 2021 court order. The coalition is also seeking a court mandate that prevents any further records from being removed without a formal request to the judge, which must also inform the Press Coalition.
Simon pled guilty in 2022 to various charges, including disorderly conduct in a restricted area. Prosecutors indicated that Simon, who wore a plated vest, incited the crowd by shouting at and cursing police, referring to them in derogatory terms. They also noted that during the January 6 incident, he encouraged fellow rioters to search for members of Congress while he wandered the U.S. Capitol for over an hour.
In August 2022, he was sentenced to eight months in prison. The presiding judge highlighted that Simon could have faced additional charges for lying to the FBI on at least two occasions, as reported by NBC News at the time.
Currently, all nine videos submitted into evidence for Simon's case on USAfx are missing.
The Press Coalition asserted, "The video exhibits are judicial records subject to the public rights of access under the First Amendment and common law, and judges have determined, case by case, that the public is entitled to access each of the Video Exhibits."
The coalition includes prominent organizations such as CNN, ABC, The Associated Press, CBS, NPR, and The New York Times. They reminded the court that since former President Donald Trump first granted pardons and commutations to January 6 rioters, federal judges have continually countered Trump's claims that his pardons were correcting the "grave national injustice" represented by investigations into the Capitol attack and the subsequent prosecutions.
U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman, who oversaw the case of former U.S. Marine Major Christopher Warnagiris, recently stated the charges against Warnagiris, who was convicted of assaulting police during the riot, were “fully supported by evidence in the form of extensive videotapes and photographs, admissions by defendants in the course of plea hearings and in testimony at trials, and the testimony of law enforcement officers and congressional staff present at the Capitol on that day.”
This court "cannot let stand the revisionist myth relayed in this presidential pronouncement," he added.
According to the Press Coalition's lawyer, Charles Tobin, the public's right to access such evidence does not diminish simply because all Capitol Case defendants have been pardoned. "On the contrary, the public interest in ensuring that the video exhibits remain available is even stronger, given that these videos represent unaltered truth, regardless of how January 6 events are portrayed by those charged or their allies."
The Justice Department under the Trump administration has been erasing evidence of rioters' actions from the internet since January. The department did not immediately respond to HuffPost's request for comment.
