J6 defendants Casey Cusick, his elderly father James Cusick, and David Lesperance, a family friend who is also elderly, are facing up to three years in prison for walking into the Capitol building on January 6 for nine minutes to use the bathroom.
When they entered the Capitol building, a cop told them how to get to the bathroom while other surrounding law enforcement officials waved the massive crowd of peaceful demonstrators into the building as lawmakers certified the stolen 2020 election results.
Police are documented in videos of the “crime scene” taking selfies with the protesters who would be later listed on the FBI’s Most Wanted List as “domestic terrorists” for stepping foot in the building.
Casey, a father of three, James, a 74-year-old pastor and purple heart recipient and David, a 70-year old grandfather, are charged with four federal felonies for stopping to use the bathroom in the Capitol building, including Knowingly Entering or Remaining in any Restricted Building or Grounds Without Lawful Authority, Disorderly or Disruptive Conduct in a Restricted Building, and Violent Entry and Disorderly Conduct on Capitol Grounds, according to the Department of Justice.
To everyday Americans, the government’s charges against Casey, James and David are bogus, absurd and preposterous. But the litigation will not be an open and shut case.
The odds are stacked against J6 defendants on trial in the District of Columbia, where the pool of potential jurors has a 92 percent rate of voting for Joe Biden in the District of Columbia. District federal judges have almost resoundingly sided with the government against so-called insurrectionists, resulting in an overwhelming, unprecedently high conviction rate for J6 defendants.
The Justice Department’s U.S. Attorney’s offices have secured a 99.8% conviction rate on at least one charge in each case, including half through guilty pleas.
The Casey, Lesperance trial began Monday. At the time of this publication, Casey, James, and David are litigating their case in US District Federal Court.
“We are going to have to fight for fair jurors,” defense attorney John Pierce, representing the Cusicks and Leserpance, told The Gateway Pundit ahead of jury selection. “This is outright intimidation tactics.
“They don’t really care about throwing these guys in jail. What they care about are the millions of people, who will not simply bow to tyrants, that will hear about them being thrown in jail for going to the Capitol to raise their voices. I mean, that’s what it’s about.”
Casey Cusick described the trauma he and his family have endured after being terrorized by the FBI, surveilled and stalked by the bureau’s agents for two and half years, the financial burdens of being deemed a “domestic terrorist” by the federal government while facing the prospect of years in prison for the few minutes he spent in the bathroom.
“I believe, beyond a shadow of any doubt in my mind, this is political persecution,” Casey told TGP in an exclusive interview. “They are threatening every patriot.
“They’re going after our country — they’re coming after us because there’s one thing they’re trying to prove: Don’t you ever support Donald Trump ever again,” he said. “They’re are coming after all conservatives, but it’s mainly to send a message: ‘Don’t you ever support Donald Trump. Don’t you ever buck the system. Don’t you ever protest against the government because we’re in charge of you. You have no rights, You have no privileges, unless we tell you.’”
Support the Cusick family and David Lesperance here.
STOP THE STEAL
When Casey, James and David arrived at the National Mall to attend President Trump’s speech, they had no idea that they would become suspects in the FBI’s most investigated case in US history.
We went to the rally because Trump wanted us to come up there to support him. We had no intention to go into the Capitol. That was something that just happened the day of. We waited an hour and a half in the Secret Service line in to get to the front of the stage, to be able to get up close to President Trump. He said at the end of the rally, ‘Now we’re gonna go down to the Capitol, peacefully protest our right to to protest an election and we wanted to go down.’
Around 2:15 pm, we started walking down toward the Capitol. The Capitol building was covered with people — you couldn’t even see the steps.
We got up to the Capitol around 2:30 pm. There were no barricades. There were no policemen even outside. There were just a lot of people just standing around chanting, ‘USA’ and standing with their flags.
People were climbing up the scaffold. Now we know from the video that’s been released some of the people stirring the crowd up and doing the stupidity were undercover cops and Antifa in Trump gear. We walked around and stood on the steps for maybe a half hour. It was freezing cold. I mean, it was like in the low 30s.
The wind was blowing really hard. My dad was freezing, and I ended up having to go the bathroom after a while. I saw an open door on the left of the Capitol steps. It was open.
I saw the one-hundredth Grandma and child walk out of the Capitol. I’m like, ‘Hey, I gotta go the bathroom, maybe we could go inside.’ We walked inside and people were just walking around — people of every race, every ethnicity, you name, it anybody and everybody was in there– it wasn’t just white males like they the government and the media tried to portray.
There were about six cops with helmets on standing to left when we walked in. People were talking to them. I have video of them taking pictures with people.
I eventually went up to a police officer and said, ‘Is there a bathroom I can use? He pointed me towards it. I went into towards the restroom, the line was like 60 deep, I mean, it was so deep. I was just overwhelmed.
According to the Department of Justice, 55 January 6 defendants have been charged with conspiracy for allegedly premeditating a plan prior to the Capitol riot to “obstruct a congressional proceeding, law enforcement and injure officers.” Leaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, including Enrique Tarrio who was not in Washington, DC on J6 and others Stewart Rhodes who did not enter the Capitol building, were framed and found guilty of “seditious conspiracy.” The government contends they conspired in a terror attack to “violently overthrow the government.”
Meanwhile, a plurality of protesters were waved into the Capitol by police. A police officer even instructed Cusick towards the House Floor during the official proceeding when he asked her how to exit the building. Casey explained:
It was definitely like if you invited somebody over to your house, and then call the cops on him for breaking and entering. Same exact thing. There is footage of the cops waving people to come through the building.
People were chanting, “USA,’ and, ‘Whose house? Our house!’ We weren’t in there to break anything. We weren’t in there to do anything. Honestly, we just thought we were allowed to go with so many people going in and out.
The police never said, ‘Sir, you guys can’t be in here.’ We could hear something over the loudspeaker, but it was so muffled. You couldn’t understand a thing they were saying while people were chanting, ‘USA, USA, USA.’
As we looked for the exit, I asked a police officer, ‘How can I get out of here? Can I go back from the door I came in?
She replied, ‘No, Don’t go back that way. You got to come this way.’ I don’t know what it is, but something about what she just told me to do felt totally wrong. I began walking in the opposite direction to exit the building and she didn’t even try to stop me or anything.
I later found out while researching a map of the building that she was leading us to walk right on the House floor — that she was waving us to go! I’m glad that I did not follow her instruction there. I turned around. We walked back out. We weren’t even in the building for a full 10 minutes.
As Casey, James and David made their way away from the Capitol grounds, they witnessed police beating protesters with nightsticks. Law enforcement officials were also seen during the same timeframe indiscriminately shooting at people’s heads with rubber bullets and throwing canisters of tear gas and flash grenades at the crowd.
“Riot police with shields were brutally assaulting Trump supporters. I saw a cop busting a guy’s head wide open. I have a picture of it — the man had his head split wide open — I mean, he had a two or three inches gash in the side of his head,” he said. “We weren’t there to fight the cops. There were people that started pushing and shoving, which, to this day, I don’t know if they were even Trump supporters because we now know how infiltrated the crowd was.”
Cops dress as civilians are seen in newly released police cam footage committing crimes and provoking others to follow suit.
BOMBSHELL! New Video From Jan 6th Shows Undercover MPD Encouraging Protesters To Storm Capital#January6th #January6th #J6Coverup #j6 #J6politicalprisoners #J6Truth #coverup #undercover pic.twitter.com/OLlYOCln81
— Vidmax.com (@VidmaxMedia) March 26, 2023
FBI TERROR ATTACKS
When Casey, James and John left Washington, DC, they had no inclination that they had committed any crime on January 6.
“We walked away and took the Metro back to the hotel. When we got back to the hotel, everybody and their brothers called us. We didn’t have good cell service at all that day because we were among so many thousands of people. Everybody asked if there was an insurrection, and we were like, ‘No, there was no insurrection.’ But that’s all they were hearing on every news channel,” Casey said. “I thought it was one of the greatest days in American history. People actually finally stood up to tyranny.”
Days later, David received a visit from the feds:
Someone called the FBI and left a tip on David, personally. On January 20, an agent went to David’s house and interrogated him. He was scared. I told David, ‘I would have said I’m not talking to you without a lawyer.’ But David told him he went to the January 6 protest with his pastor. They asked for his name. He told them, ‘I can’t give you any names. His wife then asked if it was a volunteer interview, they said, ‘Yes,’ and she then told them to, ‘Get the hell out of here. We don’t want anything to do with you.’ And so they left.
They started following Dave. They followed David to my father’s house and found out who my dad was. I don’t know if they got permission to or not, but they somehow hacked into his phone and got a picture of me and my dad standing in front of the Trump International Hotel in DC on January 5.
They stalked us for six months, from January 2021 until June 25 when they showed up at my house at 7:45 In the morning. Nine or ten cops with AR-15s drawn — every one of them had pistols or AR-15s on me, my little girl who was three years old at the time, my one-year-old and my wife — scared the living daylights out of them.
They cuff me and throw me in the car. I’m like, ‘What the heck is going on?’ An agent asked me, ‘Where’s your dad?” I have no idea or I guess he’s at home. My dad’s house was being raided at the same time.
The agent could tell I was pretty pissed. He told me, ‘Look, man, we are not doing this because we want to do it. It’s orders from DC.’ He showed me a warrant from Washington, DC, and said, ‘We’re just following orders.’ I thought, ‘This sounds all too familiar, just like the Gestapo.’
They drove away with me and he told me that they were going to let us out of jail that night. They did, which I am thankful for. I was scared, though, because my wife and my two little girls were at the house and the SWAT team wouldn’t even let them back inside while there were eight men armed there. I had no idea — I’ve heard horror stories about what some of the these police officers have done.
To this day, my daughter is unsure if cops are good or bad. Any banging noises, triggers PTSD, for me too. It got so bad to where we ended up having to move out of the house because every time somebody knocked on my door, my little girls are afraid if it’s the police coming back again.
After I moved from Florida to Oklahoma, they showed up at my house to do ‘a home visit.’ On one Sunday morning, they showed up at my door before 6:30 am, banging on my door, scared the crap out of my family and me, just to do an in home visit. Tell me that’s not harassment.
WATCH: Feds visit J6er for using the bathroom on January 6 with his elderly father:
WATCH:
National and local media dragged the Cusicks, Lesperance and their family through the mud following their arrest propagating the DOJ narrative that they are insurrectionists and domestic terrorists.
WATCH:
STATE-RUN MEDIA
“Every outlet out there — the Washington Post, Huffington Post, the New York Post, the New York Times –all of them all posted this nonsense,” Casey said. “Local news networks in Orlando came to my dad’s house, my house, knocked on our doors, wrote hit pieces. One piece published by Law and Order claimed ‘Parishioner turns on the pastor in the big January 6 case.’ None of that stuff was true. David was intimidated, scared, and didn’t know what to do. Everything was about mocking slandering.”
“The Gateway Pundit was the only news outlet, at the very, beginning that published an article telling the truth about us.”
Casey explained how the fake news surrounding his “role in the Capitol riot” resulted in immediate job loss:
I had a small business at the time, which I lost. I was making really good money as a broker. I worked with a couple of realtors that were supposedly Christian people. As soon as they saw me on the local news, they ghosted me. One of them actually still owes me money but never would answer my calls. He never spoke to me ever again after that. I lost my small business. I couldn’t find work because nobody wants to hire a J6er. To this day, I’ve yet to find consistent or steady work since. I started my own podcast called ‘The Watchmen,’ which has helped me accrue donations — that’s helped me greatly.
Luckily, I had some money from selling my house that I would have been able to live off. But that is not going to last forever.
There aren’t too many people out there that want to help Jan 6ers in the business world. The crazy thing is, when we were in jail, by the time I got out, we already had John Pierce as our lawyer. I’m grateful for John because whenever this first happened, it was ugly. No attorneys wanted to touch Jan 6. He did. I am appreciative of John Pierce, he is loyal to us. He is an OG January 6er — all these other guys have came on the scene later. John was there at the beginning,
Dave told his previous public defender, ‘I had no idea that I wasn’t allowed to go inside’ and that public defender cussed him and told him ‘Yes, you did know exactly what you’re doing –. I don’t ever want to hear you say something like that.’ How’s that sound for a public defender?
Despite the tainted jury pool and corrupt judges, Pierce is confident the Cusicks and Lesperance will be acquitted.
“This is by far, might be the best chance anybody has to get a full-on jury verdict acquittal of all charges because the facts are probably the best of any facts that we have in the case,” he said. “These defendants are pretty much the most credible and sympathetic defendants in any case. Our plan is to win this — I mean, every defendant, every charge, not guilty.”
Private counsel for J6 defendants costs approximately $20,000 a month as defense attorneys square off against the government and its unlimited resources for years on end. Pierce, the founder of the National Constitutional Law Union, represents 36 January 6 defendants and has taken many of the cases pro-bono while the defendants reimburse him through donations. To date, with help from our readers, The Gateway Pundit has raised over $2 million for political prisoners and their families.
