A tree cutter who smoked marijuana in a senator\u2019s office during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was sentenced to 3\u00bd years in prison Thursday after his strategy of interrupting and challenging the sentencing judge seemed to blow up in his face.<\/p>\n
A jury in U.S. District Court in D.C. last year convicted Brandon Fellows, 29, of obstructing an official proceeding, entering a restricted building and disorderly conduct stemming from his 36-minute incursion into the Capitol with a mob of supporters of President Donald Trump. The riot delayed Congress\u2019s official counting of electoral ballots, which showed Joe Biden had won the 2020 election.<\/p>\n
Fellows, from Upstate New York, chose to represent himself through most of his legal proceedings and was found in contempt at his trial after calling U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden a \u201cmodern-day Nazi\u201d running a \u201ckangaroo court.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn all my years as a judge, and before that as a litigator, I have never seen such contemptuous conduct,\u201d McFadden said at Thursday\u2019s sentencing, recalling that Fellows also made \u201clewd comments\u201d to his probation officer, \u201coutlandish accusations\u201d against prosecutors and heckling remarks to the jury as the verdicts were being read.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no grand conspiracy here against you,\u201d the judge said as Fellows kept interrupting. \u201cIt\u2019s time for you to grow up!\u201d<\/p>\n
Fellows, who is also a chimney repairman, was not charged with violent conduct, but prosecutors described him as a \u201ccheerleader\u201d for the riotous mob. He tried to prevent the FBI from finding him by wrapping his cellphone in foil and wiping his data. Fellows, they said, entered the Capitol through a broken window after attending Trump\u2019s \u201cStop the Steal\u201d rally at the Ellipse.<\/p>\n
He smoked pot in an office assigned to Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), \u201cparaded\u201d through the Capitol crypt with other rioters, taunted law enforcement officers, posed for photographs on a Capitol Police motorcycle outside the building, and then raved about the attack in media interviews and social media posts, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe told the jury he was having a blast,\u201d Assistant U.S. Attorney Carolina Nevin said Thursday. When the FBI caught up with him, she said, Fellows asked for a marker to write the word \u201cliberty\u201d on his forehead for his mug shot. He blamed police officers for their own injuries and showed no remorse for his actions, Nevin argued.<\/p>\n
In a court filing Tuesday that he conceded was \u201crambling,\u201d Fellows continued to assert that \u201cthe election was stolen, and we had and have a right to go in and throw the people out who made this happen.\u201d At his sentencing, he gave a 45-minute PowerPoint presentation railing against \u201ccrazy people who say a man can get pregnant,\u201d accusing prosecutors of telling lies and bemoaning the \u201cminimum of 23,736 hours\u201d he had spent in jail \u201cbeing treated like a terrorist without any constitutional rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
A liberal activist who interrupted now-Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh\u2019s confirmation hearing for the Supreme Court in 2018 had gotten off with a much lighter sentence than he would get, Fellows argued.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did not think I committed any crimes,\u201d he said, adding later, \u201cOfficers were letting people in \u2026 saying, \u2018Treat this place with respect, guys,\u2019 which seems pretty welcoming.\u201d Outside the Capitol, people with bullhorns were claiming Vice President Mike Pence had already certified Biden\u2019s election, although that turned out to be inaccurate, he said.<\/p>\n
Judges are required by law to explain the reasoning behind the sentences they impose, and they seldom appreciate it when people in the courtroom add their own running commentary. As he began to announce the punishment, McFadden barely got three sentences out before earning his first jeer from the defendant.<\/p>\n
The judge said Fellows and others who had smoked pot in the Capitol had treated it like a \u201cfrat house\u201d and shown \u201cutter disrespect for our first branch of government.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJust as they disrespect the American people,\u201d Fellows interjected. The judge admonished him not to interrupt. Fellows chimed in again.<\/p>\n
\u201cSir, sir! This is a really bad idea for you to continue to interrupt me,\u201d an exasperated McFadden told him.<\/p>\n
Fellows\u2019s mother had written a letter to the court, McFadden said. Fellows protested that he had asked her not to. (She told the judge her son was a \u201cchallenging\u201d individual.)<\/p>\n
His grandmother submitted a letter \u2014 but \u201cshe knows nothing about this case!\u201d Fellows declared. She thanked the judge for being \u201cmore than fair\u201d throughout the proceedings.<\/p>\n
Fellows argued that he thought he was allowed inside the Capitol for the riot \u2014 or, in his words, \u201can exciting museum tour with our supportive friends, the police\u201d \u2014 because of a freewheeling romp he had taken at his home state\u2019s civic mecca, the New York Capitol. \u201cNot only can you go up and touch it, but two weeks, two or three weeks prior to January 6th, I had sex in a vehicle about 20 feet away from it,\u201d he said at trial.<\/p>\n
\u201cI definitely remember that,\u201d the judge deadpanned.<\/p>\n
During a hearing via video before his trial began, Fellows wrote \u201ckangaroo court\u201d on a piece of paper and held it up to the screen, prosecutors said. While Fellows was on the witness stand at his trial in August, McFadden warned him \u201cto answer leading questions with a \u2018yes\u2019 or \u2018no\u2019 and to avoid editorializing comments about the trial and the prosecutor\u2019s questions,\u201d according to an order the judge signed Aug. 30.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile the jury rendered its verdict, he interrupted the foreperson and yelled over her, \u2018This is how you radicalize people!\u2019 When the Court thanked the jurors for their service, Fellows laughed, \u2018Ha!\u2019\u201d prosecutors wrote in a filing.<\/p>\n
The judge sentenced Fellows to 37 months in prison for his Jan. 6-related convictions and an additional five months for contempt related to his courtroom outbursts. Fellows convinced him throughout the legal proceedings that he had \u201coppositional defiance disorder,\u201d as he claimed, the judge said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI shared nothing but the truth here, unlike the other party,\u201d Fellows said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A tree cutter who smoked marijuana in a senator\u2019s office during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was sentenced to 3\u00bd years in prison Thursday after his strategy of interrupting and challenging the sentencing judge seemed to blow up in his face. A jury in U.S. District Court in D.C. last year […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1627,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}