DOJ wrestling over evidence with Oath Keeper defendants, but Jan. 6
trials still on track

"In the seditious conspiracy case of Oath Keeper ringleader Elmer Rhodes
and 10 other members of the far-right group alleged to have attacked the
U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, prosecutors and defense attorneys spent Friday
hashing out issues in federal court over evidence as they prepare the
contours of a trial that will begin this summer.

Appearing before U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington, D.C.,
assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Rakoczy announced that the government is nearing the end of its discovery process ahead of trial in July. They
have collected and sorted nearly all of the data found on digital
devices belonging to accused Oath Keepers, except those belonging to
Rhodes and alleged co-conspirator, Edward Vallejo.

Review on their devices specifically is still underway, but should be
complete in the next few weeks; most of the pertinent information is
believed to have been found already.

Defense attorneys pushed back on the trial schedule, arguing that a
massive global database set up by the Department of Justice for
defendants to review and prep evidence has not been helpful at all, but
rather, one big headache.

The DOJ’s “Capitol Siege global discovery plan”—set up so that all Jan. 6 defendants and their legal teams can have access to exculpatory
material with supervision—is a huge trove of resources tied to the department’s sweeping investigation of the attack.

It contains thousands of hours of surveillance footage from U.S. Capitol
and Metropolitan Police on duty on Jan. 6.

There are hours of radio transmissions and footage from the Secret
Service, the U.S. Senate, and the House of Representatives. There’s also location history data for thousands of devices tied to the Capitol’s
cell infrastructure, and an avalanche of tips and other search results
that were scooped up from devices obtained by law enforcement after
arrests.

With over 750 arrests so far in the department’s Jan. 6 investigation,
the database is bursting. To wit, there are over 24,000 files consisting
of closed-circuit video from U.S. Capitol Police alone in the database.
The massive 752-page spreadsheet that tries to make sense of it all took
more than 60 people at the DOJ to map out.

Phil Linder, a defense attorney for Rhodes, said their team hired help
to resolve a laundry list of technical problems they have had accessing
the database. But even if they resolved access issues by the end of
April, Linder said, it would still take defense another month to sort
through what they’re looking at.

“If the first phase of this case doesn’t get tried in July, it’s not going to be tried for a while,” Mehta lamented Friday, noting that the
next open block for a trial involving nine defendants in the sedition indictment would be December."
[snip]

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/3/4/2083942/-DOJ-wrestling-over-evidence-with-Oath-Keeper-defendants-but-Jan-6-trials-still-on-track

TB

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