A federal judge who has presided over the cases of some of the most prominent defendants charged in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the United States Capitol has rejected two defendants’ requests to postpone trial in light of President-elect Donald Trump’s upcoming inauguration.
Senior U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who once compared so-called “QAnon shaman” Jacob Chansley’s oratory skills to those of Martin Luther King Jr., was far less sympathetic to defendants Richard Slaughter and his stepson, Caden Paul Gottfried, and their request to postpone their trial.
Lamberth, a Ronald Reagan appointee, dismissed the duo’s request on Wednesday, calling it a “preposterous mischaracterization” of the Justice Department’s landmark prosecution of the riot’s perpetrators.
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In November 2022, authorities arrested Slaughter and Gottfried and charged them with robbery, assaulting officers, civil disorder, trespassing, and disorderly conduct.
According to prosecutors, they were among the rioters who assaulted police officers in the tunnel on the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace, where some of the most violent incidents occurred.
Lamberth’s order highlights the multiple postponements of the duo’s trial, first in December 2023 and then this summer. Ironically, the current schedule for their trial is January 6, 2025.
Their most recent attempt to avoid facing a jury occurred earlier this month, when defense attorney William Shipley filed a motion to continue “all matters” in the case—a move similar to what multiple Jan. 6 defendants attempted, with varying degrees of success.
Lamberth, who had previously criticized efforts to “rewrite history” regarding the Jan. 6 violence, appeared equally dismayed by the defendants’ attempts.
He first dismantled the defendants’ argument that special counsel Jack Smith’s decision to end the DOJ’s prosecution of Trump for his alleged role in fueling the fire that led to the insurrection demonstrated that the Justice Department had effectively taken “the official position” that the results of the presidential election “constitute[] grounds for pausing an ongoing criminal prosecution” of any Jan. 6 defendant.
“This argument stumbles right out of the gate: in the case at hand, the government opposed the defendants’ motion the very next day, unambiguously signaling that the department has not, in fact, adopted an official agency policy of halting any and all matters related to the Capitol Riots,” Lamberth observed.
The judge also stated that Smith’s allegations against Trump “bear no resemblance to the case against Mr. Slaughter and Mr. Gottfried; the fact that the former has been discontinued has no obvious significance for the latter.” The Department of Justice would not be treating the defendants unfairly or inconsistently by proceeding with the trial as planned.”
Lamberth found the defendants’ “more substantial argument”—that they expect to be pardoned based on comments from the once-and-future president himself—to be “unviable.”
“This Court recently had the occasion to discuss what effect the speculative possibility of a presidential pardon has on the timetable for a pending criminal matter,” the presiding officer wrote. “In short: little to none.”
The judge went on to explain how the separation of powers works in relation to the possibility of clemency:
The power to pardon rests in the hands of the President, but the just resolution of criminal prosecutions is the purview of the judiciary. Our constitutional scheme contemplates each actor performing its respective role in the manner it best sees fit, within the boundaries imposed by the Constitution and Congress. The defendants ask this Court to do something extraordinary: to defray the execution of its own constitutional duties ‘because of the lurking possibility of a presidential pardon after the conclusion of judicial proceedings,’ a decision by a co-equal branch of government in which this Court properly has no role. The Court declines that invitation, and will not continue this trial absent an independently compelling demonstration of good cause to do so.
“The defendants have not made such a showing,” the judge explained.
Lamberth concluded that Slaughter and Gottfried had provided “no reason to believe that this trial will be unusually burdensome or expensive.” Furthermore, the judge stated that they failed to show “that the financial burden on the defendants is likely to be lessened by dragging this case out even longer than it already has.”
Lamberth was also unconvinced by the argument that delaying the trial would save DOJ resources.
“[T]he Government is well-positioned to assess its own resource constraints and priorities,” wrote Lamberth in an email. “By opposing the defendants’ Motion, the Government communicated its position that going to trial is not an undue burden.”
The Court sees no reason to question the Government’s decision, and the defendants’ Motion suggests none.”
He reiterated that position in response to Slaughter and Gottfried’s argument that “the conservation of judicial resources favors continuation.”
“The Court’s overarching duty in criminal cases is to facilitate the search for truth and dispense justice accordingly,” the presiding officer wrote. “In doing so, the Court serves the public interest by ensuring the efficient administration of the law.
Proceeding with this trial, which has already been postponed multiple times for more than a year, is a good use of judicial resources.”
Lamberth was clearly hostile to the defendants’ claim that denying the delay would “likely subject the defendant to criminal convictions for no purpose other than expediency.”
“The defendants’ implicit efforts to caricature the timely pursuit of truth as a mere ‘expedien[t],’ and to recast the defendants as the hapless victims of arbitrary government action, are a preposterous mischaracterization of our justice system,” wrote Lamberth.
Courts do not simply ‘subject’ defendants to criminal convictions; people subject themselves to conviction by breaking the law, and trial is the instrument we use to decide whether they did so.”
“This Court’s duty is to uncover whether the defendants committed the unlawful things of which they are accused and, if they did, prescribe an appropriate and just punishment,” Lamberth wrote at the end of his argument. “Whatever happens afterwards is irrelevant.”
