Judge Rules Against Prosecutors Gathering Evidence on Jan. 6 Riot

WASHINGTON -- Prosecutors suffered a setback this month in their evidence-gathering against the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrectionists even as they won their first felony conviction against a rioter.

A federal judge ruled that a private firm hired by the U.S. Attorney’s Office was not authorized to review evidence that prosecutors say they need to prosecute rioters.

Prosecutors wanted to share all their grand jury materials with Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP, which often hires attorneys for document review projects. The evidence is derived from more than 500 defendants’ cases.

U.S. District Court Chief Judge Beryl Howell said Deloitte and its contractors do not qualify as government employees under grand jury disclosure rules that would give them access to the information.

The government "has not made a sufficient showing of particularized need to warrant disclosure under Rule 6" of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, Howell’s ruling said. Rule 6 requires that grand jury materials must be kept secret.

An exception allows disclosure of grand jury records to "any government personnel" a government attorney "considers necessary to assist in performing that attorney's duty to enforce federal criminal law."

Prosecutors said Deloitte’s staff were the equivalent of "government personnel" but Howell disagreed. She wrote that the case law defines government personnel as "only employees of public governmental entities."

More than 6,000 grand jury subpoenas so far resulted in thousands of documents being returned to prosecutors.

Meanwhile, a 38-year-old Florida man who pleaded guilty to one felony count of obstructing an official proceeding was sentenced to eight months in prison and ordered to pay $2,000 in restitution for damaging the Capitol.

Paul Hodgkins spent 15 minutes in the Senate chamber on Jan. 6, holding a flag supporting Donald Trump and endorsing the former president’s contention that the election was fraudulently stolen from him.

The civil case is In Re: Capitol Breach Grand Jury Investigations Within the District of Columbia, case number 1:21-gj-00020, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

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