Just six months after the Jan. 6 attack, one of the earlier criminal cases involved a 49-year-old Indiana woman who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of demonstrating inside the Capitol. When it came time for sentencing, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, a prominent Reagan-appointed jurist, took the opportunity to comment on Republican efforts to rewrite the history of the insurrectionist violence.
“I’m especially troubled by the accounts of some members of Congress that January 6 was just a day of tourists walking through the Capitol,” Lamberth said in June 2021. “I don’t know what planet they were on. … This was not a peaceful demonstration. It was not an accident that it turned violent; it was intended to halt the very functioning of our government.”
Nearly three years later, the conservative judge is still at it. NBC News reported:
Senior U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, appointed to the bench by former President Ronald Reagan in 1987, said at a resentencing hearing Thursday that he is “shocked” at how prominent political figures have talked about the convicted criminals who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, calling the politicians’ remarks “preposterous” and warning that such rhetoric “could presage further danger to our country.”
While he did not mention any Republicans by name, the judge specifically referenced radical rhetoric from a variety of GOP members of Congress, including Reps. Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, and Elise Stefanik of New York, who recently referred to Jan. 6 criminals as “hostages.”
The defendant in this specific case was a man named James Little, who has repeatedly claimed to be a victim of political persecution.
In fact, the case has followed a curious trajectory. As a Politico report explained, Lamberth sentenced Little a couple of years ago to 60 days in prison and three years on probation. He appealed, and the case eventually returned to the judge for…
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