In Courtroom 17 of D.C.’s U.S. District Court on Monday morning, the sentencing session for Jan. 6 rioter Dova Winegeart featured arguments between a prosecutor, a defense attorney and a federal judge.
But there might as well have been another person in the hearing: Donald J. Trump.
Not even inaugurated yet, the man who called Jan. 6 convicts “hostages” is already a dominant figure in courtrooms, a reality that feels like a gut-punch for the career prosecutors who have spent years trying the nearly 1,600 people arrested over a day of grotesque violence and threat.
Indeed, as defendants and their attorneys take turns referencing Trump’s oft-repeated avowals to free any convicted offenders, it’s easy to believe that Trump has won — that the effort to bring to justice those who stormed the Capitol is doomed.
Yet the funereal vibe in the courthouse misses the reality of these proceedings that have happened since the election: It’s going to be very hard to simply memory-hole the biggest investigation in Justice Department history, one that created an indelible historic record of the assault. Why else would so many Jan. 6 perps still be furiously fighting against verdicts that are going to be undone in six weeks?
That’s certainly what was going on Monday in Courtroom 17, which was supposed to be a humdrum sentencing for Winegeart, an Oklahoma bakery owner who was found guilty of a misdemeanor in July for charging the Capitol and swinging a metal-tipped pole at a door.
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