美联社
档案-在这张2021年1月6日的档案照片中，唐纳德·特朗普总统的支持者，包括雅各布·陈
普罗维登斯，R.I. -关于选举在1月6日帮助将叛乱分子带到国会大厦，现在一些因在暴乱中的行为而面临刑事指控的人希望他们的轻信可以拯救他们，或者至少获得一些同情。
至少三名被指控与暴力围攻有关的被告的律师告诉美联社，他们将归咎于选举错误信息和阴谋论，其中大部分是由当时的总统推动的唐纳德·特朗普误导客户。律师们说，那些传播错误信息的人和那些参与国会大厦实际破坏的人一样对暴力负有责任。
“我现在说这话听起来有点像个白痴，但我对他有信心，”被告安东尼·安东尼奥在谈到特朗普时说。安东尼奥说，在大流行的无聊导致他转向保守的有线新闻和右翼社交媒体之前，他对政治不感兴趣。“我认为他们在说服人们方面做得很好。”
乔·拜登(Joe Biden)在去年的总统选举中获胜后，特朗普和他的盟友一再声称竞选是偷来的，尽管这些说法一再被两党官员、几个州的外部专家和法院以及特朗普自己的司法部长揭穿。在许多情况下，关于投票站、选票欺诈和选举官员腐败的毫无根据的说法在社交媒体上被放大，这加剧了特朗普破坏早在11月前就开始的选举信心的运动。
美国地方法官艾米·伯曼·杰克逊(Amy Berman Jackson)周三在一份决定中写道，错误信息的浪潮仍在蔓延，该决定拒绝释放一名被控威胁杀害美国众议院议长南希·佩洛西(Nancy Pelosi)的男子。
“鼓舞被告拿起武器的稳定鼓声并没有消失，”伯曼在裁决中写道，她命令克利夫兰格罗弗·梅雷迪思二世继续被拘留。“六个月后，关于选举被盗的谣言每天都在主要新闻媒体以及州和联邦政府的权力走廊上重复，更不用说几乎每天都在谴责这位前总统了。”
被告只代表了400多人的一小部分，他们被指控试图破坏拜登胜利的认证，但失败了。但他们的论点突显了这些谎言在引发骚乱方面发挥的重要作用，尤其是在许多共和党高层试图将1月6日的暴力事件降至最低，数百万人仍错误地认为选举被盗的情况下。
那些被指控的人中至少有一人计划将错误信息作为他辩护的关键部分。
艾伯特·沃特金斯(Albert Watkins)是圣路易斯的律师，代表雅各布·单斯利(Jacob Chansley)，也就是所谓的卡农萨满，他将这个过程比作洗脑，或者落入邪教的魔掌。沃特金斯说，反复暴露在谎言和煽动性言论中，最终淹没了他的客户辨别现实的能力。
“他没有疯，”沃特金斯说。“那些爱上(邪教领袖)吉姆·琼斯并去圭亚那的人，他们有丈夫、妻子和生活。然后他们喝了可乐。”
类似的法律论据未能证明李·博伊德·马尔沃无罪，他17岁时与约翰·艾伦·穆罕默德一起参加了2002年在华盛顿特区杀害10人的狙击狂欢。他的律师试图辩称马尔沃对他的行为不负责任，因为他被年长的穆罕默德所欺骗。
报纸女继承人帕蒂·赫斯特的律师也辩称，他们的当事人在被激进的塞班尼斯解放军组织绑架后，被洗脑参与银行抢劫，但没有成功。
范德比尔特法学院刑事司法项目主任、精神病学教授和心理能力专家克里斯托弗·斯洛博金(Christopher Slobogin)说:“这不是我见过的获胜的论点。”
斯洛博金说，除非对阴谋论的信仰被用作更大的、可诊断的精神疾病(比如偏执)的证据，否则不太可能克服法律对能力的推定。
“我没有责怪辩护律师提出这个问题，”他说。“你竭尽全力，提出所有你能提出的论点，”他说。“但是，仅仅因为你有一个固定的、错误的信念，认为选举是偷来的，并不意味着你可以冲击国会大厦。”
康奈尔大学威尔康奈尔医学院的精神病学教授齐夫·科恩说，从心理健康的角度来看，阴谋论会影响一个人的行为。科恩是阴谋论和激进化方面的专家，他经常为被告进行心理能力测试。
科恩说:“阴谋论可能会导致人们做出非法行为。”。“这是危险之一。阴谋论侵蚀社会资本。它们侵蚀了对权威和机构的信任。”
19岁的布鲁诺·约瑟夫·库阿(Bruno Joseph Cua)被指控在美国参议院会议厅外推搡一名警察，他的律师将暴乱前后他的当事人的极端言论归咎于社交媒体。律师乔纳森·杰弗里斯(Jonathan Jeffress)表示，库阿“鹦鹉学舌般地重复着他在社交媒体上的所见所闻”。Cua先生不是自己想出这些想法的;他喂它们。”
在暴乱发生后的一天，在一份报纸上，库阿写道:“自由之树常常需要从暴君的血液中汲取水分。而树渴了。”
Cua的律师现在把这种评论描述为一个易受影响的年轻人的咆哮，并说Cua对他的行为感到遗憾。
27岁的安东尼奥在芝加哥郊区做太阳能电池板销售员时，流感大流行让他停止了工作。他和他的室友几乎整天都在看福克斯新闻，安东尼奥开始在抖音上发布和分享右翼内容。
尽管他以前从未对政治感兴趣——甚至在总统选举中投票——安东尼奥说他开始被选举被操纵的阴谋论所困扰。
法庭记录显示安东尼奥好斗且好战。根据联邦调查局的报告，他向一名国会警察扔了一个水瓶，这名警察正被拖下大楼的台阶，毁坏了办公室家具，并被警察的身体摄像头捕捉到，大喊“你想要战争?我们有战争。1776年又来了”在军官。
安东尼奥曾为极右翼反政府民兵组织“百分之三”戴过眼罩，被控五项罪名，包括在国会大厦暴力进入和扰乱秩序，以及在内乱期间阻碍执法。
安东尼奥的律师约瑟夫·赫尔利(Joseph Hurley)表示，他不会利用他的客户对选举欺诈的虚假指控来为自己开脱。相反，赫尔利将利用他们来辩称安东尼奥是一个易受影响的人，被特朗普和他的盟友利用了。
“你会得这种病的，”赫尔利说。他说，错误信息“不是一种辩护。不是。但它会被提起来说:这就是他在这里的原因。他在那里的原因是因为他是个笨蛋，相信他在福克斯新闻上听到的。”
Defense for some Capitol rioters: election misinformation
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Falsehoods about theelectionhelped bring insurrectionists to the Capitol on Jan. 6, and now some who are facing criminal charges for their actions during the riot hope their gullibility might save them or at least engender some sympathy.
Lawyers for at least three defendants charged in connection with the violent siege tell The Associated Press that they will blame election misinformation and conspiracy theories, much of it pushed by then-PresidentDonald Trump, for misleading their clients. The attorneys say those who spread that misinformation bear as much responsibility for the violence as do those who participated in the actual breach of the Capitol.
“I kind of sound like an idiot now saying it, but my faith was in him," defendant Anthony Antonio said, speaking of Trump. Antonio said he wasn't interested in politics before pandemic boredom led him to conservative cable news and right-wing social media. “I think they did a great job of convincing people.”
After Joe Biden's victory in last year's presidential election, Trump and his allies repeatedly claimed that the race was stolen, even though the claims have been repeatedly debunked by officials from both parties, outside experts and courts in several states and Trump's own attorney general. In many cases, the baseless claims about vote dumps, ballot fraud and corrupt election officials were amplified on social media, building Trump's campaign to undermine faith in the election that began long before November.
The tide of misinformation continues to spread, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson wrote Wednesday in a decision denying the release of a man accused of threatening to kill U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
“The steady drumbeat that inspired defendant to take up arms has not faded away,” Berman wrote in her ruling ordering Cleveland Grover Meredith Jr. to remain in custody. “Six months later, the canard that the election was stolen is being repeated daily on major news outlets and from the corridors of power in state and federal government, not to mention in the near-daily fulminations of the former president.”
The defendants represent only a fraction of the more than 400 people charged in the failed attempt to disrupt the certification of Biden’s victory. But their arguments highlight the important role that the falsehoods played in inspiring the riot, especially as many top Republicans try to minimize the violence of Jan. 6 and millions of others still wrongly believe the election was stolen.
At least one of those charged plans to make misinformation a key part of his defense.
Albert Watkins, the St. Louis attorney representing Jacob Chansley, the so-called QAnon shaman, likened the process to brainwashing, or falling into the clutches of a cult. Repeated exposure to falsehood and incendiary rhetoric, Watkins said, ultimately overwhelmed his client's ability to discern reality.
“He is not crazy," Watkins said. "The people who fell in love with (cult leader) Jim Jones and went down to Guyana, they had husbands and wives and lives. And then they drank the Kool-Aid.”
Similar legal arguments failed to exonerate Lee Boyd Malvo, who at age 17 joined John Allen Mohammed in a sniper spree that killed 10 people in the Washington, D.C., area in 2002. His lawyers tried to argue that Malvo wasn't responsible for his actions because he had been deluded by the older Mohammed.
Attorneys for newspaper heiress Patty Hearst also argued, unsuccessfully, that their client had been brainwashed into participating in a bank robbery after being kidnapped by the radical Symbionese Liberation Army group.
“It's not an argument I've seen win," said Christopher Slobogin, director of Vanderbilt Law School’s Criminal Justice Program, a psychiatry professor and an expert on mental competency.
Slobogin said that unless belief in a conspiracy theory is used as evidence of a larger, diagnosable mental illness — say, paranoia — it’s unlikely to overcome the law’s presumption of competence.
“I’m not blaming defense attorneys for bringing this up,” he said. “You pull out all the stops and make all the arguments you can make,” he said. ”But just because you have a fixed, false belief that the election was stolen doesn’t mean you can storm the Capitol.”
From a mental health perspective, conspiracy theories can impact a person’s actions, said Ziv Cohen, a professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University. Cohen, an expert on conspiracy theories and radicalization, often performs mental competency exams for defendants.
“Conspiracy theories may lead people to commit unlawful behavior,” Cohen said. “That’s one of the dangers. Conspiracy theories erode social capital. They erode trust in authority and institutions.”
Lawyers for Bruno Joseph Cua, a 19-year-old accused of shoving a police officer outside the U.S. Senate chamber, attributed his client’s extremist rhetoric before and after the riot to social media. Attorney Jonathan Jeffress said Cua was “parroting what he heard and saw on social media. Mr. Cua did not come up with these ideas on his own; he was fed them.”
In a Parler posting a day after the riot, Cua wrote: “The tree of liberty often has to be watered from the blood of tyrants. And the tree is thirsty."
Cua's attorney now characterizes such comments as bluster from an impressionable young person and said Cua regrets his actions.
Antonio, 27, was working as a solar panel salesman in suburban Chicago when the pandemic shut down his work. He and his roommates began watching Fox News almost all day long, and Antonio began posting and sharing right-wing content on TikTok.
Even though he'd never been interested in politics before — or even voted in a presidential election — Antonio said he began to be consumed by conspiracy theories that the election was rigged.
Court records portray Antonio as aggressive and belligerent. According to FBI reports, he threw a water bottle at a Capitol police officer who was being dragged down the building's steps, destroyed office furniture and was captured on police body cameras yelling “You want war? We got war. 1776 all over again” at officers.
Antonio, who wore a patch for the far-right anti-government militia group The Three Percenters, is charged with five counts, including violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds and obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder.
Joseph Hurley, Antonio’s lawyer, said he won't use his client’s belief in false claims of election fraud in an attempt to exonerate him. Instead, Hurley will use them to argue that Antonio was an impressionable person who got exploited by Trump and his allies.
“You can catch this disease,” Hurley said. Misinformation, he said, “is not a defense. It’s not. But it will be brought up to say: This is why he was here. The reason he was there is because he was a dumbass and believed what he heard on Fox News.”
