January 6 Defendant Matthew Martin Found Not Guilty
Judge acquits federal defense contractor on all charges.
April 6, 2022 - WASHINGTON, D.C. - Matthew Martin, a federal defense contractor who worked in New Mexico at Los Alamos and held a top secret security clearance has been found not guilty at trial today after attending the rally on January 6, 2021.
He had been charged with the following:
His nine page criminal complaint can be read in full here. Mr. Martin was acquitted of the charges after a two (2) day bench trial, which he chose over a jury trial with U.S. District Court Judge Trevor McFadden presiding. McFadden happens to be a Trump appointee, but has been favorable to the government for the most part with respect to the January 6 cases, going along with the pre-trial detention requests among other things.
Mr. Martin was arrested in April of 2021 after he took leave from his job to attend the rally in January. He testified that he didn’t see everything that was going on around him at the time because it was chaotic and there was a massive crowd.
It was interesting to see McFadden calling this out, and I agree with Ms. Kelly about the pre-trial detention which I found outrageous especially in the case of first-time non violent offenders.
U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves is the prosecutor who is responsible for the railroading of January 6 defendant Matthew Perna, who ended up taking his own life. According to the DOJ themselves Matthew Martin was only inside the Capitol building for 10 minutes, and he did not harm anyone, vandalize anything or steal anything.
Zoe Tillman was covering the trial today, along with the jury trial of another January 6 defendant.
We have now seen video showing U.S. Capitol Police officers waving protesters inside the building that day, and standing by the open doors without telling people they need to leave. This could have been seen as an invitation or permission to enter the building by people who were present that day.
One of the things I find interesting about the January 6 cases is how their attitudes after the fact are playing a role in their trials and sentencing. Prior January 6 defendants have gone through what appears to be “re-education” disavowing the former President and what happened that day.
This is the level of insanity we are at, when a non-violent man who simply walked inside the building for 10 minutes is being treated like a hardened criminal with the FBI questioning airport employees over a comment he made briefly to them. These are thought crimes, it has nothing to do with his actual conduct and actions on January 6.
That could have been exactly what he meant, but this reporter is characterizing it as “walking back” the comment, perhaps the comment was taken out of context by the federal government.
Another thing the government was doing was making a big deal about whether he “saw” the things he was filming, like a broken window, an alarm going off, or police trying to clear the building. Mr. Martin said that he left the Rotunda when he was the officers trying to clear the place out.
After he left the building, he was on the North Terrace filming protesters clashing with the U.S. Capitol Police. He denied taking part in the chanting of the protesters while he filmed.
Mr. Martin said he did not know there had been a breach of the building until he got back to his hotel and heard about it on the news. The government continued to focus on things he said and his opinions, not on his actual actions that day.
This is a good sign, because the facts are simple, he was either disorderly or he wasn’t and things he “said” and his “opinions” are not relevant to that.
This is another important distinction, many of the people who entered the Capitol stayed within the velvet ropes and did not engage in violent behavior.
A question that should be asked: what about the people who entered after the building had been evacuated. Are they still guilty of “disrupting” business?
The Assistant U.S. Attorney tried to make the argument that no one was there to pray but they were “occupying space for political purposes.”
This is perhaps an indication of why the federal government has still not released the over 14k hours of CCTV footage from that day. Would the footage show people being waved into the building?
This is a major victory for the January 6 defendants, especially those who got swept up with the crowd, were only inside the Capitol for a few minutes and then exited the building peacefully.
This is an important marker for the January 6 cases.
Mr. Martin must be happy that he can finally get his life back, unlike Matthew Perna.
Politico on the verdict:
I suspect we will see other similar verdicts as these cases go to trial. I believe the government was fully aware of this, and that the reason for the overhanded pre-dawn raids, the media smears, and the pre-trial detention requests was to try to intimidate the defendants into taking plea deals.
I recently discussed January 6 with attorney Joseph McBride, Esq. on Alison Morrow’s channel, a segment of which you can view here: