The most wondrous story in the grab bag of this morning’s news is that, according to a New York Times report, some defendants in their upcoming trials for their violent participation in the January 6th attack on Congress plan to argue that they were only responding to police violence.
The odds that this line of defense will work are wafer-thin. Until the George Floyd murder, it would be a cold July day in Death Valley for a court to rule against the cops, and since the George Floyd murder, it would still be a cold July day in Death Valley for a court to rule against police conduct in the midst of a riot, much less an insurrection. Moving from the general to the particular, there are also the videos and photos of the defendants that those defendants will have to overcome. The Times reports, for instance, that one defendant making the police brutality claim is “social media influencer” Edward Lang, charged with assaulting cops with a baseball bat. Presumably, Lang will have to prove that he was expecting to join a softball game and just got caught up in the melee.
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