Umair
Among the thousands of people who will descend on Washington on Monday for President-elect Donald J. Trump’s inauguration, a handful are expected to be criminal defendants charged with joining the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, on Mr. Trump’s behalf.
At least eight rioters who have faced criminal charges have been granted permission in recent days by the judges in their cases to attend the inauguration and celebrate the swearing-in of the man they sought to keep in power after he lost the 2020 election. Most were accused of relatively minor offenses like trespassing or disorderly conduct.
Their expected presence at the inauguration comes as Mr. Trump himself has relentlessly sought to rewrite the history of Jan. 6, seeking to play down the violence that day and recast it, falsely, as “a day of love.” He has also vowed repeatedly to pardon many of those who have been charged in connection with the riot, perhaps including even defendants accused of violent crimes.
Kevin and Carol Moore, a married couple from Massapequa, N.Y., are typical of those who have been cleared by a judge to make the trip to Washington.
The two were charged in May with illegally entering the Capitol on Jan. 6. They spent about eight minutes in the building. Charging documents say that Mr. Moore, who works on buses for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, “aggressively yelled and gestured at a law enforcement officer” while he was in the lobby.
Federal prosecutors tried to stop the Moores from attending the event, saying, as they have in response to many such requests, that allowing Jan. 6 rioters to revisit the area near the Capitol for another pro-Trump gathering would be tantamount to letting them “return to the scene of the crime.”
“The last organized event the defendants attended in Washington, D.C., spiraled into a full-scale riot,” prosecutors said.
But Judge John D. Bates, who is overseeing the Moores’ criminal case, disagreed. He noted that the couple had not been accused of hurting anyone or breaking anything, and that nothing in their history showed they had a “propensity for violence.”
Moreover, Judge Bates said, Mr. Trump’s inauguration promised to be a very different event than the chaotic protest that erupted on Jan. 6.
“Past is not prologue here,” he wrote. “The nature of the inauguration is wholly different from the last event the Moores attended that involved the transition of power. Put simply, the inauguration will involve a crowd largely supporting the peaceful transition of power, not opposing it. Thus the chance the Moores will ‘engage in mob violence’ is minimal.”
At least one rioter who plans to attend the inauguration has been charged not just with misdemeanors, but also with felonies: Leo Giobbie, a New Jersey man, who is facing one count of felony obstruction of an official proceeding and another count of interfering with law enforcement officers during a civil disorder.
Prosecutors say that Mr. Giobbie used a bullhorn to encourage his fellow rioters outside the Capitol to push against the police, and pushed on the backs of those who were directly shoving against officers.
At one point, prosecutors added, someone handed Mr. Giobbie a crowbar and he beat on a door of the Capitol before passing it to another rioter.
Nonetheless, Judge Carl J. Nichols allowed Mr. Giobbie to attend the inauguration, saying in a brief order that he had not been charged with assaulting the police.
