In what can only come as an extreme shock to people who still view the January 6 Capitol protests as a gigantic conspiracy to violently take over the reins of the federal government, a federal judge has just acquitted New Mexico engineer Matthew Martin of all charges relating to the protests.
Acquitted! As in Not Guilty! As in walking out of the federal courtroom a free man.
Mind you, I’m not referring to a federal jury trial. For some reason, Martin chose to waive a jury trial. In a non-jury trial, the judge serves the same role as a jury. He not only determines the law of the case, he also determines whether the evidence supports a finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
In most instances, it is much more difficult, as a practical matter, to get an acquittal from a judge than it is to get one from a jury. That’s because federal judges ordinarily lean toward the prosecution, especially since many of them are former prosecutors.
Our American ancestors clearly understood this phenomenon, which is why they had the Bill of Rights guarantee the right of trial by jury.
Thus, to get an acquittal from a judge is considered by lawyers to be a super-big achievement.
The facts of the case were not very much in dispute. There was no question but that Martin entered the Capitol, along with lots of other protestors. He took the stand and told the judge that he figured the Capitol police were granting people permission to enter the building, a point that prosecutors challenged. Once inside, Martin did not start shooting people, setting off bombs, or committing any other violent acts that would ordinarily be associated with a violent revolution. Instead, he spent his time taking pictures with his cellphone.
According to Politico.com, in finding Martin not guilty, Judge Trevor McFadden called Martin’s conduct “about as minimal and not serious as I can imagine.”
Whoops! That doesn’t bode well for those people who have been claiming that the protestors were involved in a gigantic conspiracy to violently take over the federal government. Never mind that the protestors didn’t have AR-15s, bombs, or other high-power weapons that are ordinarily used in violent revolutions. In fact, the only person who was shot and killed was one of the protestors, who wasn’t even armed.
Politico stated that “the verdict could be viewed as a message from McFadden to prosecutors that pursuing criminal charges against nearly every demonstrator who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6 was unwise and that resources should have been trained more intensely on those accused of violence or of conspiring to block the electoral vote count.”
Good for Judge McFadden. His verdict of acquittal goes to show why an independent judiciary is an essential part of a free society. There is no doubt that if the Justice Department, the Pentagon, or the CIA were determining Matthew Martin’s guilt, the result would have been a conviction.
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Another five-star review of my new book An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story: (Buy it at Amazon: $9.95 Kindle version; $14.95 print version.)
“As someone who has studied the JFK assassination since its tragic occurrence, I have amassed almost two hundred books and have read countless more. This book will go down as one of the best in my collection. Hornberger did a masterful job of piecing together the puzzle: the reason for the assassination, those likely responsible, proving fraud (as opposed to simply incompetence) in regard to the autopsy and brain exams, how and why the Zapruder film was altered, and how Abraham Zapruder (and now his granddaughter) chose to deal with this “encounter with evil.” He accomplishes it all in a logical and understandable argument, additionally offering why the Zapruder family elected never to acknowledge the alteration of the film.
“First of all, his lucid and concise treatment of JFK’s war with his national security establishment provides the clear motive for the assassination and who would be involved. Secondly, the fraud of the autopsy- which was in direct conflict with the truthful and competent Parkland doctors, is an irrefutable argument, referencing the meticulous research on this topic done by Doug Horne. Third, given the multiple witnesses to a car stop (including police officers riding near JFK’s limo) which does not occur in the extant film, along with the appearance of a black patch, also seen in the existing Zapruder film on Kennedy’s head (in the location of the wound as described by the Dallas doctors, nurses, and many Bethesda witnesses), this is clearly indicative of film alteration. While the work done by Thom Whitehead and Sydney Wilkinson, cited in Hornberger’s book, provides the coup de grace on this obvious fraud regarding the massive head wound, viewing the close-up frames from the 1998 “Image of an Assassination” (specifically frame 317), any layperson can see the black patch themselves – even without 6K scans!
“Very importantly, the interviews of Dino Brugioni (former chief information officer of NPIC who was a world-recognized imagery intelligence analyst) by Peter Janney and Doug Horne, reveal the fraud perpetrated that weekend with the film at the National Photographic Interpretation Center. This puts the final stamp on who was responsible for the assassination.
I had the great honor of getting to know a former FBI agent who worked on the case, Don Adams. He was a man of unparalleled honesty and integrity. Don wrote in his 2012 book, From an Office Building with a High-powered Rifle about viewing the Zapruder film on a large screen: “Then came the head shot. I observed how his head was flung backwards, with a large piece of skull and brain matter exploding into a mist to the left rear of the car.” (My emphasis). This is NOT in the extant film – Don clearly viewed the original. While Don always was proud of being an agent of the FBI (he later became a chief of police near his home after he retired, and then passed away in 2014), he was willing to acknowledge and lay bare the fraud some members of that institution were willing to commit (unjustifiably in the name of “national security”), including falsification of documents as provided in his aforementioned book.
“Therefore, anyone who wants to confront the truth of what occurred on November 22, 1963, is encouraged to read this book. This includes JFK researchers who are wed to a particular scenario because of their biases or work on this topic. Everyone should be seeking the truth and want to follow where the evidence leads. This book, paired with the volumes on the medical evidence presented by Doug Horne (and the paradigm shift that was earlier made by David Lifton), provides us with the sad truth of what occurred on that tragic day for our country and why it is relevant almost sixty years later.”–Beverly S.