While there is considerable evidence of violent pro-Trump rioters breaking windows and viciously assaulting police officers at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, there has always been a question about the main Columbus Doors to the Capitol Rotunda being opened from the inside.
As part of the case involving Kelly Meggs and other members of the Oath Keepers charged, among other things, with breaching the Capitol using a ‘tactical stack' military formation, defense attorneys argue it was impossible to break into the Capitol at those massive 17 foot-high doors.
The Epoch Times (ET) reports that defense attorney Jonathon Moseley wrote in an eight-page memo to federal prosecutors that “the 20,000-pound Columbus Doors that lead into the Rotunda on the east side of the U.S. Capitol are secured by magnetic locks that can only be opened from the inside using a security code controlled by Capitol Police.”
Only Capitol Police could open those massive doors.
Yet, the federal indictment accuses the defendants of “breaching” the Rotunda entrance around 2:39 p.m. on January 6.
Mosley added:
The outer doors cast from solid bronze would require a bazooka, an artillery shell or C4 military-grade explosives to breach. That of course did not happen. You would sooner break into a bank vault than to break the bronze outer Columbus Doors.
The Epoch Times continues:
Moseley said he and an assistant took a tour of the Capitol on Jan. 22, along with other attorneys and investigators. The U.S. Capitol Police officers on duty were emphatic, he said, that the doors could not be opened from the outside.
… video from outside the entrance shows a group of Oath Keepers near the Columbus Doors, which are clearly open at the time the men got near the threshold. By the time they entered the Capitol, dozens if not more than 100 people had flowed into the building, the video shows.
According to ET, “Moseley proposed a stipulation that both sides in the case agree none of the demonstrators or the defendants opened the Columbus Doors on Jan. 6 and that the government strike three paragraphs of the indictment that refer to defendants entering the Capitol because they are “untrue and withdrawn.” Prosecutors refused that proposal, he said.”
Mosley also savaged federal prosecutors for holding back vital information and “dishonestly trying to deceive the public” for eight months by concealing that a total of six permits had been issued for demonstrations at the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6.
He explains that those permits implicitly give permission for people to enter, exit and cross the Capitol grounds to reach each event.
Altogether, Moseley accused prosecutors of crafting a “fabricated case” against the Oath Keepers that is “false and reprehensible.” He added:
This baseless prosecution is the greatest threat to the Republic since 1812. This prosecution is not about an attack on our Republic. This prosecution IS the attack on our Republic, seeking to criminalize political dissent, free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of political association, and the right to petition [the] government for the redress of grievances.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
The only disturbances and crimes committed at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C, on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021 were planned, staged and carried out by the seditious DNC/FBI/DC Capitol Police/ANTIFA crisis actors!
……………like FBI plant Ray Epps!
If that is the case, please explain to me why the people on the videos were not members of any of those groups you mention, as we now know from arrests, and plea bargains at court appearances, and testimony from persons agreeing to cooperate.
Obviously the problem is the government controlled the 1/6 events to a certain extent, and they’re controlling the narrative, the evidence and the prosecutions. Are they releasing all the video and answering questions about which agitators are being charged and which aren’t?
The more we see, the more accurate your comment sounds.
AGREED!!!
The one person in charge of security of the Capitol is Nancy Pelosi. She had to be the one that gave the order.
Every person became an invited guest once the doors were opened.
The truth will come out and it’s not going to go well for a lot of people.
The fact is that it is this lawyer’s job to try to muddy and confuse the people including a possible jury member about the actual facts, which are recorded on video. The first thing is even before the rioters gained entrance to the actual building, they were already law breakers once they went past a security check point the one most obvious is the barrier which looked like a bicycle rack and attacking the Capitol police is a felony in anyone’s law books. Possibly because the doors are so old and precious the Capitol police did not want them damaged being so many were already in the building through broken windows, why risk damaging those beautiful doors when the Capitol had already been breached. The other thing is that permits issued did not authorize anyone to defy police orders.
You left out one small detail. Who was it who led the pack to push back those barriers??? Ray Epps, and where was the DC police to make sure those barriers weren’t compromised? This whole thing sticks to h-ll. There is no way to breach 17 ft high doors that lock magnetically on the outside. SOMEBODY OPENED THEM!
what a complete and utter moronic response from one who typifies exactly what it is to be A BRAIN DEAD FRAUDULENT HYPOCRITICAL LYING NEVER DO WRONG DEMOCRAT IN AMERICAN SOCIETY TODAY. YOU AND YOUR FELLOW IDIOTS ARE A CANCER TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND ARE 100% RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT IS KILLING OUR COUNTRY TODAY. GET OUT OF MOMMY’S BASEMENT, GET A REAL JOB AND STOP PLAYING ALL THE VIDEO GAMES DADDY BOUGHT YOU FOR YOUR 45TH BIRTHDAY….GROW UP!!!!!!
So the police stand down while BLM commits billions of dollars in property crimes, but they’re suddenly concerned over the doors of the capital? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
You have also got to stop this Political one-sided verbiage. You do not know that the people who were rioting were Trump supporters. You do not know that at all. The ones who were destructive and breaking windows could have easily been antifa, BLM actors posing as Trump supporters. I have seen much video showing Trump supporters trying to stop those who are supposed Trump supporters from breaking windows or trying to get in. So stop assuming that the people who were rioting, fighting,… Were Trump supporters. That is not known. In fact the people who did identify as Trump supporters were in no way causing any damage within the rotunda, or even in the offices. They were not destructive at all.
People have to stop using this for a bitch supposing that the rioters were Trump supporters, that has just not been proven. In fact one person within the Capitol, w/Ashley Babbit Was identified as a BLM supporter. And where did that go? Just disappeared from the news! It is clear that antifa, BLM, even the police FBI and DOJ could easily have been on the this. I spoke to a person who had been there and they said there were actually rubber bullets that were being fired from above to stir up the crowd. They said they were so scared. They never expected their government to attack them. There is more here and we need more video from those cameras. There are over 1000 cameras in that area, where is that footage??? We are only getting small snippets. Did they incite the crowd??
My son was there and saw no violence. The doors had to be opened from inside. The first people in were tourists. I would have walked in too!
If you watch how Antifa works, they move in slowly, stand around and suddenly from a signal start attacking and ripping down fences, even fighting with the Trump people who tell the attackers to stop, this was not peaceful after that signal was given. It was peaceful until Antifa was given the signal. Those on the side of the building were definitely Antifa and some Trump people followed them through the window openings where the woman was shot dead. With all the rallies of Trumps it is not Trump people who are burning the American flag and carrying gas masks and sticks and pails with cement in them to use to fight the police and innocent Trump supporters. In 2016 every rally Trump had, there were Antifa and Soros paid people blocking roads so people couldn’t get into the rallies, you know, a political speech or free speech according to our Constitution. Trump listeners were chased, hit in the back of their heads and had pails of cement thrown at them and the police especially in the democratic cities did nothing. Every rally Trump supporters had to run a gambit to hear a political speech. Dead silence from democrats who were behind this crap. These anti Trump people were at the Capitol too doing the same crap against Trump supporters as in 2016. Funny you don’t see Trump supporters at democrat and Biden rallies physically attacking people who want to hear a democrat speech. The FBI finally admitted they had FBI infiltrators in the Antifa rioters who were actually giving attack orders and not one of these FBI infiltrators have been arrested. And the Capitol police were poring gas on the Trump people who were invited into the Capitol and there was so much gassing that people couldn’t see where to go and two people fell down and were crushed and were sufficated to death and the Capitol police kept gassing the crowd and pushing themselves into the crowd so people couldn’t move. I never heard of gassing being done to BLM and Antifa while they were burning down cities and killing people on the very streets the people lived on while the police were told to do nothing.
And the Capitol door should be used at our border. It could stop the illegals all by itself. Why does the Capitol have such a door, is there hidden millions of dollars hidden in the Capitol or kept there for some reason. Use that door at the border against the illegals, not at the Capitol against citizens.