If you stormed the Capitol, you probably shouldn’t be your own lawyer
Alleged insurrectionist Brandon Fellows accidentally admitted to more crimes while testifying in his own defense.
If you’re the sort of person who might break into the United States Capitol Building because of an entirely imaginary scenario of massive election fraud, odds are critical thinking is not, shall we say, your strong suit. That might explain alleged Jan. 6 rioter Brandon Fellows’s disastrous decision to represent himself at a court hearing this week, during which he not only reportedly admitted to the initial charges against him, but accidentally fessed up to a bunch of other crimes as well.
Despite an overt warning from U.S. Judge Trevor McFadden that “I do not think this is a good idea,” Fellows nevertheless took the stand for himself during a hearing Tuesday on whether he could have his bond status revoked, making good on his request a month ago to act as his own counsel after spending two weeks reading law books in a jail library. According to WUSA9,a local CBS affiliate in D.C., Fellows — who is charged with obstruction of an official proceeding for his role in the Jan. 6 riots — used his time in court to not only to ramble about Guantánamo Bay and wrapping his cell phone in foil, but also described putting a different judge’s wife’s phone number down as his emergency contact in order to disqualify that judge from a separate trial of his. And wouldn’t you know it: That’s super illegal!
Other illegal conduct Fellows admitted to under oath was that he had not only broken into the Capitol on Jan. 6, as originally charged, but that he also had skipped out on his court ordered mental health appointments — the initial cause of his revoked bail status, which prompted Tuesday’s hearing. Oopsie doodle!
“You’ve admitted to incredible lapses of judgment here on the stand, not least of which was seeking to disqualify a New York state judge,” McFadden told Fellows after he blabbed about all the crimes he’d done.
“You are charged with a federal felony,” McFadden said during his response to Fellows’s various admissions. “This is not a community college where you get pats on the back.”
Fellows had previously described himself as having a “maverick-like personality,” which apparently means “the sort of person who wears a large fake orange beard and sits on a police motorcycle.”
After all that, would it shock you to learn that Fellows’s request for a change in his bond status was denied? And so, Fellows will head back to jail, presumably to brush up on his law library studies.
