The MeidasTouch Podcast - Conservative Federal Judge Has SCATHING MESSAGE for Trumpers

Episode Date: April 8, 2024

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on the sentencing note by conservative DC Federal Judge Royce Lamberth who explains why America can never normalize the behavior of those who follow Donald Trump. Get a free thirty-day supply of SuperBeets Heart Chews and free full-sized bag of tumeric chews valued at $25 by going to http://meidasbeets.com Visit https://meidastouch.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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explained that the conduct on January 6th and those who continue to support the insurrectionists, no doubt a reference to Donald Trump, should never be normalized in our constitutional system. And folks, this is why I always say that this current election is not about liberal v. conservative or Democrat v. Republican. MAGA stands for an overthrow of our system of democracy. And when we see actual conservative judges like Royce Lamberth calling out MAGA insurrectionists, calling out implicitly Donald Trump for trying to promote these types of people as being patriots,

it shows that we should all rally around under the pro-democracy banner. And these are some powerful words by federal judge Lamberth, where he says, this cannot become normal. We as a community, we as a society, we as a country cannot condone the normalization of the January 6th Capitol riot. And these were his notes. If you'll allow me to, it's so important. I want you to hear what an actual conservative sounds like.

And I know we have real conservatives who follow the Midas Touch Network. We have independents who follow the Midas Touch Network. We have independents who follow the Midas Touch Network. And of course, we have progressives and liberals. This is a big tent pro-democracy community. I'm going to read this order a little bit out of order to share with you what I think are some of the most important points by federal judge Royce Lamberth in sentencing this January 6th insurrectionist to 87 months. Let me start with this paragraph on page five, where judge Lamberth says,

as the court has said before, on January 6th, 2021, a mob of people invaded and occupied the United States Capitol using force to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power mandated by the Constitution and our Republican heritage. There can be no room in our country for this sort of political violence. The framers designed our constitutional system so that the people govern through their representatives according to law. Decisions are the result of elections, debates, and compromise. The people through their representatives decide. By contrast, those who think political ends justify violent means seek to replace persuasion with intimidation. the rule of law with might makes right.

Violence risks begetting a vicious cycle that could threaten cherished conventions and imperil our very institutions of government. In that sense, political violence rots republics. Therefore, January 6th must not become a precedent for further violence against political opponents or governmental institutions. This is not normal. And again, this is from federal judge Lamberth, who was appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1987. And as we said, this MAGA takeover of the Republican Party is not your parents' Republican Party. Federal Judge Lamberth points that out. Let me go through this in a little more detail. Federal Judge Lamberth explained that today, the court sentence, the insurrectionist is named Taylor James Janotkis.

The court ordered that Mr. Janotkis be committed to the custody of the Bureau of Prisons for a term of 87 months. The following are the notes that the court used when delivering portions of its oral sentencing. Now, one of the reasons the court wanted to publish its notes is because Mr. Giannakis, who is the insurrectionist who was sentenced, had a lot of people write notes on his behalf, trying to attest to his character outside of what he did on the insurrection. And they tried to say Mr. Genoticus feels remorse about what went down. But the judge wanted to make a factual record that the judge is aware that, well, that's what Genoticus is saying in the courtroom and maybe to his friends, that Genoticus has gone on right-wing media, right-wing YouTube channels, right-wing podcasts, and he has said that he's a political prisoner, that Jay Six was a patriotic

day, and that he has not shown remorse at all. The court goes on to say how, look, the court has reviewed over 20 letters from friends and family members of Mr. Giannakis, and most asked for the court to release him right away. And many say he did nothing criminal on January 6th and is not a danger to the society. I appreciate that defendant has, with exceptions, been courteous and respectful to the court, and I harbor no personal animosity toward him. The court agrees that Mr. Genoticus, like many January 6th defendants, is not inherently a bad person. That is what makes these cases hard. As the court has said many times, I take no great pleasure in locking up

defendants who led good lives until their actions on January 6th. After 37 years on the bench, the court knows how disruptive a prison sentence can be for defendants and their families. Nevertheless, the court cannot let people off the hook for their actions that day. In light of the defendant's supportive letters, the court would like to take a moment to explain what it is trying to accomplish when it sentences a defendant such as Mr. Giannaticus for events arising out of the January 6th attack on the Capitol. A society in which

everyone does what is right by his own lights, Where adherence to the law is optional would be a society of vigilantism, lawlessness, and anarchy. As my late friend Justice Antonin Scalia once wrote, it is the proud boast of our democracy that we have a government of laws and not men. A person dissatisfied with the government or the law has various nonviolent ways to express his or her views. The First Amendment protects freedom of speech. It also enshrines the right of the people peaceably, let me repeat, peaceably to assemble. And history has shown there is some role of civil disobedience of the Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King

Jr. types in which citizen engages in principle and peaceful, let me repeat, peaceful disobedience of the law in order to protest a perceived injustice. In that situation, the person acknowledges they have broken the law and accepts the legal consequences that follow. But what the jury found that Mr. Giannottakis did on January 6th was neither First Amendment protected activity nor civil disobedience. As the court has said before, the First Amendment does not give anyone the right to enter a restricted area or engage in riotous activity in the Capitol. It obviously does not give anyone the right to assault the police, nor was the January 6th riot an act of civil disobedience because it was violent, not peaceful, opportunistic, not

principled, coercive, not persuasive, and selfish, not patriotic. The portrayal of Mr. Genoticus as either a peaceful protester or someone simply swept up by the crowd does not match the reality established at trial. One thing that strikes me about the letters is that few of the authors seem to know what he actually did. One person even wrote to me that they know. I've tried so many different things to maintain a heart-healthy lifestyle like crash court diets or starting a daunting cardio routine and frankly it just hasn't been helpful for me. We often think living a more heart-healthy life means making big unsustainable changes but with Super Beats Heart Chews you can get daily blood pressure support

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blood pressure no pills to swallow no ingredients to mix or prepare it's plant-based and no artificial sweeteners or colors i cannot recommend super beats heart shoes enough to you our viewers and listeners double your potential with super beats heart shoes get a free month's supply of super beats heart shoes on all bundles and a free full-size bag of turmeric shoes. Buy it at $25 with your order by going to MidasBeats.com. Yep, we got our own website there, folks. Get the exclusive offer only at MidasBeats.com, spelled M-E-I-D-A-S-B-E-E-T-S.com. Thank you. He has never done anything violent and never would.

Perhaps Mr. Genoticus has contributed to this misperception because although he repeatedly expressed his, quote, heartfelt and sincere regrets at trial, since his conviction, he has denied his conduct and downplayed the January 6th riot itself. But the court knows the facts of this case because it has heard from the witnesses and examined the evidence, including police body camera footage and videos filmed by Mr. Genoticus himself. The court would therefore like to set the record straight about what Mr. Genoticus did that day.

In an angry mob, there are leaders and there are followers. Mr. Genoticus did that day. In an angry mob, there are leaders and there are followers. Mr. Genoticus was a leader. He knew what he was doing that day. On January 5th, he posted on social media, quote, burn the city down. What the British did to DC will be nothing. The next day while marching to the Capitol, he recorded and posted a video in which he proclaimed, quote, we're walking over to the Capitol right now and I don't know, maybe we'll break down the doors. Once he got to the restricted grounds of the Capitol, he made his way to the vanguard of the crowd, all the while yelling into the megaphone he had brought with him. As Metropolitan Police Department Captain David Augustine testified at trial, rioters

overwhelmed the police line and forced the officers to retreat up the Capitol's southwest stairs under the scaffolding created for the inauguration. The video played at trial shows that Mr. Giannottakis led the charge up the stairs. He soon reached a fallback line of barricades manned by police in order to protect the Capitol building itself and the members of Congress staff and others inside. When he got there, he waved on more people toward the police line and threw his megaphone bar commands to pack it in. So although one of the letters claims that Mr. Janotikas set out with good intentions and ended up in a crowd of orchestrated out of control protesters, in fact, it was Mr. Janotikas himself who organized protesters to violence that day.

Once enough rioters had heeded his calls and swarmed against the police line, Janotikas deployed his megaphone to give encouragement and step-by-step instructions for overpowering the police. As he announced, one, two, three, go, he and his fellow rioters, including his co-defendant, Craig Bingert and Isaac Sturgeon, picked up the metal barricades and slammed them into the police officers. Genotikus and others then raised the barriers higher until they were about head level with the officers so that the mob could brawl with officers without the barriers in their way. In the resulting melee, Genotikus seized MPD officer Juan Gonzalez by the arm. Officer Gonzalez testified at trial that with Genoticus holding his arm in place, he was unable to hold back the line of rioters or protect himself.

By effectively disarming officer Gonzalez, Genoticus made him vulnerable to serious injury or worse. Indeed, Officer Gonzalez said that during the assault, he felt like he had suffered serious injury and perhaps even broken his leg. Another officer was standing alongside this officer. Officer Mark D. Avignon thought he was going to die. As Mr. Giannakis walked away from the Capitol, he recorded several videos in which he expressed satisfaction with what had occurred and pride in the role he had played. He crowed that

for the first time since 1817, the Capitol was stormed and that members of Congress were forced to evacuate. He boasted that the crowd was so irate that, quote, we probably would have murdered a few of the members of Congress, quote, had we seen exactly who they are. He summed up his conduct, quote, I was on the front line. I was on the gate. I organized the push up to the Capitol because I felt like that is exactly what we needed to do. He also exclaimed it was, quote, 1776 again, and he was fighting for the freedom against foreign oppressors rather than battling his own elected representative government. It goes into how the court said this is not normal. The court goes on to say, and January 6th, including by issuing letters and giving speeches and podcast interviews

from jail. The D.C. Jail and the United States Marshal Service have reported to me that to give interviews, he purposefully bypassed D.C. Jail safeguards when the jail blocked him from calling into a podcast directly rather than consult the jail's authorities to see if such an interview would be permitted. He devised a workaround to reach the podcast host. It has come to the attention of the court that this particular podcast episode was ultimately published on YouTube. Mr. Janotikus' message was this, quote, We did nothing. We touched a gate. We got pepper sprayed. We moved back. That was it.

He also said, quote, everything about January 6th is just overblown. Similarly, in a December 12, 2023 letter, he explained his actions by saying, quote, I chose to get rowdy, but not violent. At the time, I felt it was a right born of necessity. These comments suggest that Janotikas sought to mislead the court and jury when he repeatedly expressed contrition for his actions on January 6th, for instance, by asking witnesses, quote, to please accept my sincere apology for my role in the events that day. Moreover, these remarks leave no doubt that Janotikas, unlike many other January 6th defendants sentenced by the court, did not accept responsibility for his actions and did not show true remorse. Indeed, he did not do so even to this day. And then the court goes on to say,

I read all of these letters. I took into account their comments. In our system of justice, we punish people not for their overall character, but for their actions. Living an otherwise blameless life does not grant anyone a free pass. Genoticus is not here today because of who he is, but to be accountable for what he did. Like the jury, I listened to the witnesses and examined the evidence of his actions on January 6th. Having done so, the court concludes that unfortunately for him, his friends, his family, and our society, it seems that Mr. Genoticus left his good qualities at home when he went to the Capitol on January 6th. The actions of Mr. Genoticus are inexcusable and his choices have consequences.

The court takes no pleasure in sending the defendant to prison, but it will not shirk its solemn duty to enforce the law and order. I hope you appreciate that I pretty much read the full order for you because I agree with mostly everything Judge Lamberth said right there, law and order. And at the same time, he says that Donald Trump is out there posting on his social media platform this, his song with the January 6th insurrectionist, 27 of 29 in the D.C. jail assaulted or attempted to assault police officers. And this is who Donald Trump calls hostages and has changed our national anthem to a J6 anthem with the rioters that he plays at all of his events and has the crowd pledge their allegiance

to the J6 hostages. Despicable. But it is important to point, that's a Reagan-appointed judge whose order I just read. I'm Ben Myselis. This is the Midas Touch Network. Hit subscribe.

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