Saturday, August 24, 2024

Convicting The Insurrectionists -- Cop Assaulting Cop

 

Then:



Now:



We covered his arrestNow another MAGAt insurrectionist gets his comeuppance, a cop no less.

A Maryland police officer was convicted on Friday of charges that he joined a mob’s Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and hurled a smoke bomb and other objects at police officers guarding a tunnel entrance.

U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden heard two days of trial testimony without a jury this week before he found Montgomery County Police Officer Justin Lee guilty of two felonies and three misdemeanors. The judge, who also acquitted Lee of two other misdemeanors, is scheduled to sentence him on Nov. 22.

Lee, 26, ignited and threw a smoke bomb into the tunnel entrance on the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace, where a mob of rioters attacked a group of outnumbered police officers. The device struck a police officer’s riot shield and filled the mouth of the tunnel with a large plume of smoke, prosecutors said.

“No police officer should have to endure these attacks and provocations,” McFadden said.

Lee, who remains free until his sentencing, didn’t show any obvious reaction as the judge read aloud his verdict. His attorney declined to comment after the hearing.

After Lee’s arrest last October, the police department said it had suspended him without pay. Department spokesperson Shiera Goff said police officials will be “moving ahead with termination procedures” now that Lee has been convicted.

“The actions of one individual do not define the entire department,” the department said in a statement last year.

Lee, of Rockville, Maryland, applied to be a Montgomery County police officer in July 2021 — six months after the riot. The department said it hired Lee approximately one year after the riot and didn’t know about his alleged involvement in the attack until July 2023, when it learned he was under FBI investigation.

Videos show Lee wearing a Maryland flag-patterned gaiter over his face outside the Capitol. He also wore a military-style medical bag attached to his clothes.

Lee waved at other rioters to overtake police as the mob attacked a line of officers on the West Plaza, according to prosecutors. Moving to the Lower West Terrace, Lee tossed the smoke bomb and three other “rock-like objects” at officers guarding the tunnel, the judge found. Prosecutors said Lee later joined other rioters in “spotlighting” officers inside the tunnel with a flashlight.

The judge rejected Lee’s claim that he was “just trying to make a statement” about police brutality after seeing officers use force against other rioters that day. McFadden also said he believes Lee went to the Capitol on Jan. 6 intending to disrupt Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. [snip]

More than 1,400 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. Over 900 of them have pleaded guilty. Over 200 others have been convicted after trials decided by a judge or jury.

This is one of the insurrectionist "hostages" coup leader Malignant Loser would pardon upon getting into the White House again.  A person of Asian heritage fighting for White Nationalism.  A moron.

(Photos:  Top, Lee on January 6/ FBI;  lower, Lee, with his proud parents? / Jose Luis Magana, AP)