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July 10, 2021 - Epoch Times
11:09
Kash's Corner: The Insurrection Lie | Clip
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It's an interesting date that we're filming today.
It's July 6.
That's six months to the day from January 6.
And indeed, we're going to talk a little bit about January 6.
So there's about 500 people that have been charged.
And from what I understand, 50 of them are actually in pre-trial detention as we speak.
And there's been I think interviews with parents of some that are actually spending time in solitary confinement.
So let's just explore this whole issue.
How does this work?
There's people that have been in detention for the better part of six months, almost, potentially.
Having been a public defender and a former terrorism prosecutor, I've literally argued over 1,000 bond hearings before state and federal judges.
So basically what happens is after there's an arrest of an individual For any crime, they go before a judge.
They have to go before a judge because it's the law to see if they should be held in jail until their next trial date or if they should be released on bond.
But the law requires two factor analysis.
One, is the person arrested a danger to himself or the community?
And two, is that person a flight risk?
But there's a lot of evidence that both the prosecutor and the defense attorney get to put on at a bail hearing, bond hearing, for the judge to make that determination.
Okay, so have you looked at these cases, any of these cases of the 50-odd people that are actually in pretrial detention that bond has been denied?
When you're talking no bond, you're talking the most severe crimes that someone can be accused of.
Murder, terrorism, narco-trafficking, weapons dealing, arson cases, where there is danger to life, there is danger to the community, and there's a continued risk with that individual being put back into the community.
And another thing that actually judges are allowed to look at during a bond hearing is the individual's criminal history or lack thereof.
If the individual has never been arrested or committed a crime, that bodes well for the defendant to be released back into the community, at least under some form of supervision.
There are an array of combinations that you can use to ensure the defendant is not a danger to himself or the community and returns for court, such as cash bail, such as home confinement, such as electronic monitoring, such as daily reporting to your probation officer.
We used to use these in conjunction with each other to secure defendants' bond rights so they wouldn't be held in pretrial detention.
So in this particular case, what are you seeing that's unusual from your experience?
Yeah.
So having argued literally over a thousand of these on either side, we were able to, when I was a public defender, to fashion bond release conditions for many individuals who were not charged with severe crimes.
A lot of the crimes that I looked at that were being charged as a result of January 6th are not significant felonies.
They are not crimes involving weapons or danger to persons or property.
A lot of it is low-level felonies such as basically breaking and entering type situations, resisting arrests, not allowing Congress to perform its official duties.
Now, if the law was broken all day long, those people should be prosecuted.
But there's a step procedure in that process for this bond situation to occur.
That's the first thing that happens.
And unfortunately, what looks like happened here in this case is that there was an overarching political tone to the decisions being made on bond situations for these 500 individuals arrested, specifically as to the 40 or 50 that remain in detention.
Because once that decision is made to hold a defendant in detention...
It is almost impossible to get that person out until they are either acquitted or sentenced.
Fascinating.
There's also examples that I've been made aware of fairly recently.
There's people that are actually spending essentially in solitary confinement, which amounts to 23 odd hours per day in complete isolation.
Yeah, it's pretty much the worst.
Like, you know, having been in federal and state prisons around the country, be as a public defender or a national security prosecutor, I've been in what we call segregated housing units or the hole for solitary confinement.
And those rules for federal detention are very strict.
It is 23 hours a day in your cell.
It is no contact with any other inmates or family visitation rights.
You do not get exercise.
Most inmates have the opportunity to go to what's called a commissary, purchase items like snacks and foods and walkie-talkies and things like that.
And they're also allowed to congregate together during the day.
When you're in solitary confinement, all of those privileges are revoked.
And solitary confinement is supposed to be for the most violent offenders.
And also individuals who other inmates might attack, such as a celebrity that has been arrested like a Jeffrey Epstein.
And so it's for the protection of the prison population and the individual that's being detained in solitary confinement.
This seems a gross overreach to be holding, and I read some of this, an 18-year-old and a 70-year-old with no criminal history in solitary confinement as a result of their arrest from the January 6th.
Incident at the Capitol when none of them are charged with an aggravated felony.
I can't find a single one of them that requires a full-on pretrial detention solitary confinement for months, if not years on end, until that person is adjudicated by the criminal justice system.
To me, that should not stand.
I think it's ironic that I am the one who is talking about Reforming the judicial system, the prison system, to the benefit of the defense.
Because when I was a public defender and people found out that I held moderately conservative beliefs, I was excoriated because I was told that that position was sacrosanct for the left.
And it seems that situation has turned 180 degrees on its head.
Just for the January 6th arrest.
And I just don't, me personally, don't have room for that hypocrisy in our judicial system.
The term insurrection has been used, I mean, from the beginning.
I don't hear it as much anymore.
You're right.
It's a political lightning rod.
In the community, in the non-legal community, insurrection paints pictures of war and rioting and death and violence.
In the legal sense, it's an actual crime to commit insurrection.
Now, the Attorney General and the Department of Justice are responsible for determining whether or not any of these individuals have met the threshold to be charged with insurrection.
And not one of the 500 people that has been arrested as a result of January 6th has been charged with the crime of insurrection.
And to me, that speaks volumes.
Because that's what so many people on the Hill and so many people in mainstream media were shouting from the tops of their lungs because it fit a political narrative that they wanted to continue.
And now, as you've pointed out, the facts don't measure up.
And we have a situation where zero for 500 have been charged with insurrection or any crime rising to that level.
And we've also, you know, unfortunately there was loss of life on that day too.
And, you know, you have to investigate those seriously and thoroughly.
What's come out recently is that the loss of life that occurred on that day was not due to the direct violence of any of the individuals that have been arrested.
No one's been charged with murder.
No one's been charged with manslaughter.
And there's countless hours of footage that the Department of Justice and the FBI have not released to the public.
And more importantly, I understand sometimes that you can't produce publicly everything until the trial process is complete.
But that information and that video evidence has been withheld from the defense attorneys for these individuals.
And to me, as a former public defender and prosecutor, that is not an application of the law that I practiced under.
Apparently there's something like 14,000 to 15,000 hours of this footage from all sorts of cameras, personal, public and otherwise.
That's a monstrous amount of footage to go through.
I did hear one of the attorneys for these defendants saying that this footage is actually being compiled into some sort of cloud database that at some point they're supposed to get access to.
It just feels like this is something that's going to take a huge amount of time.
Another thing I was thinking earlier as you were speaking, you know, these appeals, for example, how long can this take?
I mean, because these people have been, you know...
You know, what I used to tell folks when I was a public defender, having to have spent time in solitary confinement with your clients and sometimes having to stay there after the client's been taken back to a cell until the Bureau of Prison Guards can come and get you waiting hours, it's not pleasant.
And I think every federal prosecutor should spend one hour in solitary confinement as part of their training.
So they know when they ask a judge to detain someone, For months, if not years, what they are exactly doing, what price they are exactly exacting from the criminal justice system and who they're removing from the community and what conditions they're placing upon them.
I think that would be a good way to teach individuals who are trying to practice before a federal judge to apply the law fairly.
But to your original point, it is resource exhaustive.
Two have a defense attorney.
Two go before a bail hearing.
Two go before an appellate court.
These things have time and money.
And most of these individuals that are charged from January 6th don't have the money.
So what ends up happening is they sit in prison for months and months.
And as you know, federal cases can go on for years before there's an actual trial or the case is adjudicated with a plea or dismissal.
And the mountain of evidence that you alluded to, that's a whole due process issue, and I'm not going to pretend to be a constitutional lawyer, but I did try 60 jury trials to verdict in the United States, which is more than most attorneys do in a lifetime.
The whole point of the criminal justice system is to allow the defense to see all the evidence.
And not see it at the end, but see it from the beginning, the middle, throughout the entire case, because if there's evidence in there that shows the defendant is actually innocent or someone else committed the crime, then that's the whole point of due process.
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