A number of the 460-plus people indicted for their roles in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol seem to be picking up on the defense of their actions that day being proffered by gaslighting Republican congressmen and right-wing pundits—namely, that they were just innocent protesters being like tourists, and they really didn’t harm anything or anyone, and the conditions of their detention are harshly punitive for such harmless folk—in their efforts to obtain pretrial release from prison.
So far, it isn’t working with the federal judges overseeing their cases, who have uniformly kept the indictees behind bars. But then, that’s not a terribly difficult call to make when, as with a ruling this week in the case of Texas militiaman Lonnie Coffman, it turns that not only did the suspect bring a truck full of guns and Molotov cocktails and park it near the Capitol that day, but he also has a long history of threatening paramilitary activity dating back to 2014, when he joined a border militia outfit focused on harassing immigrants.
According to the memorandum handed down by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly on Monday, Coffman—who had been living in his truck on the streets of D.C. for the previous week—parked his vehicle two blocks from the Capitol before the siege began, and was seen both conferring with other insurrectionists outside the building and joining the destructive mob inside it. He was arrested when he returned to the pickup.
Police searching for bombs had cordoned off the truck. Inside the vehicle, Coffman had stored a shotgun, a rifle, three pistols, and ammunition. They also found a cooler filled with 11 Mason jar bombs that, if detonated, could have acted like napalm. When police took him into custody, they found two handguns on him, indicating that he had been carrying them while participating in the insurrection.
Investigators found the name of a Texas-based militiaman in his wallet, and then, when searching his home in Texas, also found paperwork connected to a Southwest Desert Militia group. They also found a handwritten list of names in his truck identifying politicians and media figures as “good” and “bad,” with a similar list among his papers at home.
"That list then named specific individuals, along with corresponding descriptions transcribed next to their names," the judge’s order stated. "These descriptions included, for example: ‘ex Dem. Senator, traitor,’ ‘Billionaire left[i]st, traitor,’ ‘radical Dem. Senator,’ ‘billionaire oilman & fund-raiser for Obama,’ and ‘G.E., Obama’s lap dog’.”
Coffman’s was only one of several cases in which the arrested indictees have pleaded for pretrial release, all of them complaining about their incarceration at the Central Corrections Center in Washington, D.C. None have succeeded yet in persuading judges that they pose no threat to the public.
- Shane Jenkins of Ohio’s bid for an early release was shot down by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, who observed that Jenkins had traveled to Washington with a tomahawk with which he attempted to break a window, and was recorded throwing a flagpole and a desk drawer at Capitol Police. "On Jan. 7, he claims that it was peaceful, and he wanted to be heard," Mehta said. "It clearly wasn't peaceful. I think that's a heightened concern in my mind that Mr. Jenkins is prone to engage in acts of political violence."
- Bradley Bennett of North Carolina—arrested along with his lifestyle-coach girlfriend in March—filed a fresh request for pretrial release. His attorney claims that federal prosecutors have approved a plan for his home detention, which seems unlikely, considering that prosecutors have filed documents indicating Bennett had attempted to elude identification to authorities for weeks after the event. Bennett has claimed there were "antifa instigators" among the rioters but that he saw "no severe violence" and "certainly not from the right."
- Timothy Hale-Cusanelli’s attorney complained to the court this week that his client is "justifiably frustrated with the lack of progress” in the case, and wants to replace him with a different defender. Hale-Cusanelli—a Navy employee with a security clearance and a penchant for dressing up like Adolf Hitler and spouting white-supremacist rhetoric—is angry with the slow pace of the legal discovery process and the refusal by prosecutors to offer him a plea deal. “Defendant has been preventively detained over four months in a case where no one ever alleged that he ever did anything violent,” the attorney wrote, adding that he too would prefer to be taken off the case.
The memorandum in Coffman’s case is noteworthy, as Scott MacFarlane notes, because it throws cold water on attempts to by attorneys to free their clients on the basis of concern about being infected with COVID-19. Kollar-Kotelly explored that issue and found the concern largely groundless.
“While COVID-19 remains a public health concern, there are encouraging signs showing that conditions are improving,” she wrote. “For example, the General Counsel of the D.C. Department of Corrections reported to the Court on May 14, 2021 that no current residents tested positive for COVID-19 (out of nearly 1,500 total inmates at the D.C. Department of Corrections). Moreover, only two new residents tested positive for COVID-19 upon intake and were subsequently placed in isolation to undergo a quarantine period. Furthermore, COVID-19 vaccines are now available to inmates at the jail and have been administered to a growing number of the jail’s population.”
Coffman’s activities during the weeks before the insurrection were illustrative of the kind of how radicalized far-right extremists can spiral from political crankdom into violence, as well as their ideological kinship with the same Republicans now trying to gaslight the public about their assault on democracy. At one point, he called Senator Ted Cruz's office and tried to visit the Republican at home.
Cruz's office also had notes about his call on December 11: "Man says that he went to [Senator Cruz's] DC home to visit him with no answer at the door, and then called to try to arrange a meeting with him over the phone. Directed him to the scheduler's email address. He is also looking for contact info for S. Hannity, M. Levin, and R. Limbaugh," a Cruz staffer had noted, adding that Coffman seemed "not 100% there" during the call and that he seemed "to be coming from the 'friend' angle in wanting to ... help with the election fraud he saw."
According to the judge’s memorandum, Coffman had been on the FBI's radar since 2014, when he traveled to the Rio Grande to participate in Camp Lonestar, a “Patriot” encampment at which armed men went on patrols along the U.S.-Mexico border searching for immigrants, who they would harass and sometimes detain. Coffman had taken a shotgun and pistol there, the court filings say.
The camp's address and the name of a Texas militia member were on a paper in his wallet January 6, prosecutors said. "This evidence indicates that Mr. Coffman had potential plans to coordinate with other members of the January 6, 2021 riots at the United States Capitol," Kollar-Kotelly wrote. His connections to militia groups, the judge noted, "raise questions about Mr. Coffman's community ties and his willingness to engage in armed paramilitary activity."
Camp Lonestar first made news in Texas in 2014 attracting number of armed militiamen from around the rest of the nation to the little spot on the Rio Grande where participants could go rambling on “missions” running reconnaissance on border-crossing activities.
At times, the gun-toting militiamen even detained border crossers they caught—cuffing them with plastic ties and guarding them with weapons until Border Patrol arrived to take them away—while at other times they would chase people swimming over the Rio Grande back across the river.
Then participants began having run-ins with the law. First, a Border Patrol officer took shots at one of the militiamen while pursuing a border-crossing fugitive. Then it emerged that the man who had been shot at, who was carrying a weapon at the time of the incident, was a felon prohibited from possessing firearms. And so, it then turned out, was Kevin C. “K.C.” Massey III, the ostensible “commander” of Camp Lonestar, who was with the militiamen at the time and whose background check revealed a similar felony conviction.
Massey was convicted and served three years in prison. After his release, he broke probation and became a fugitive, vowing never to be caught alive. He was later found to have killed himself at a remote property.
The man whose property hosted the Lonestar encampment later expressed his regret for having done so: “Some of the stuff that was taking place, it wasn’t that great,” said “Rusty” Monsees. “They jeopardized my safety and some other people’s safety by what they were doing.”