A federal judge compared a Capitol rioter to Hitler’s followers on Friday, November 18, 2022 (see story here).
Judge Reggie Walton held nothing back when he sentenced Dustin Thompson, 38, an Ohio exterminator, to 3 years in prison for invading the Capitol and stealing a coatrack and bottle of liquor on Jan. 6, 2021.
Thompson (with coatrack in photo below), who is college-educated, was the first Capitol rioter to try out the “it’s Trump’s fault” defense. At his trial, his lawyer tried to convince the jury Thompson was merely “following presidential orders.” They didn’t buy it and convicted him after less than three hours of deliberation (see story here). The prosecutor called his defense disrespectful and insulting (see story here).
He fared no better at his sentencing, where the judge told him, “You must have thought the people sitting in the jury were fools,” and made a reference to “radicalized” people in Nazi Germany who followed a demagogue and committed atrocities. “It seems to me you bought into that same type of mentality,” Walton then said, adding that it was “utterly scary” that many people are “still buying a lie.”
Among those buying Trump’s Big Lie were many Republican candidates in the 2022 elections, including several who were involved in the Jan. 6 events in some way.
Voters almost uniformly rejected those candidates, which didn’t deter Trump from announcing a 2024 presidential run, but just a couple days later Biden’s attorney general appointed a special prosecutor to consider criminal charges against him.
Which brings me to this point: If you take orders from someone who’s committing a crime, you’re committing a crime, too. At the Nuremberg trials in 1945, top Nazi leaders claimed they were just following Hitler’s orders. They stretched ropes.
It’s like this: God gave us brains to think with, not let others think for us, and you’re responsible for your actions. Dustin Thompson now has three long years of forced idleness to contemplate that truth.