Jury trial begins for Missouri man charged with injuring officer during Capitol riot
A jury trial gets underway Monday for a Missouri man charged with multiple felonies in connection with the Capitol riot, including injuring an officer with a tent pole.
John George Todd III, of Blue Springs, faces six counts stemming from his actions on Jan. 6, 2021. Prosecutors say the incidents were captured on video.
Todd, 34, was originally charged in May 2022 with four misdemeanors. The government said he twice declined offers to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor. Instead, he opted to take his case to trial, then requested multiple continuances.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell had warned Todd that delaying his case would give the prosecutors time to keep investigating and possibly come up with more charges against him. And in preparing for the trial, the government said it uncovered additional video that showed Todd assaulting officers.
On Dec. 6, a federal grand jury indicted Todd on a felony charge — inflicting bodily injury on an officer — in addition to the four misdemeanor counts. Todd asked to testify before the grand jury and did so before its deliberations, an unusual move.
The grand jury then returned a second indictment on Jan. 17, adding a felony charge of obstruction of an official proceeding. Now, he faces more than 40 years in prison.
Howell on Friday denied a late motion to dismiss the obstruction charge during a pre-trial hearing in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia where she scolded Roger Root, one of the attorneys defending Todd, for failing to properly prepare for the trial.
She also appeared skeptical of several of Root’s arguments and has denied the defense’s attempts to argue that Todd was protected by the First Amendment when he entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
At one point, Howell said Root looked “puzzled” but he replied by saying he felt threatened by Howell’s stern warnings that he abide by rulings she made ahead of the trial about which arguments can’t be used by the defense.
“You’ve threatened me,” Root said. “I’d like to put on the record that it’s a little chilling.”
“Oh, don’t be threatened,” Howell said.
The government described Todd’s alleged actions in a recent court filing. Todd entered the Capitol on Jan. 6 through the Upper West Terrace at 2:44 p.m., the document said, carrying a fiberglass tent pole with an American flag attached to it. A minute later, it said, Todd entered the Capitol Rotunda through its west door, then left through the north door. He re-entered the Rotunda through the north door at 2:52 p.m.
“While in the Rotunda, the defendant interacted with individuals, yelled at police, and smoked some type of cigarette,” it said.
Todd exited and entered the Rotunda once more, the government’s filing said, and encountered Capitol police officers who were trying to clear the area. From 3:10 p.m. to 3:17 p.m., he repeatedly pushed against police while being ordered to leave.
“In body worn camera footage obtained from the Metropolitan Police Department, the Defendant was recorded yelling at law enforcement officers,” it said. “At one point inside the Rotunda, while near a law enforcement officer, the Defendant yelled, “I swear to God, I’ll hip toss your ass into the f—-in’ crowd, mother f—--!””
Capitol Police Officer Noah Rathbun, one of those trying to clear the area, believed Todd was about to hit someone with the tent pole, the filing said, and tried to take it from him. While the two wrestled over the pole, it splintered.
“The officer and the defendant both saw the splintered fiberglass, but the defendant then ripped the splintered pole out of Officer Rathbun’s hands,” it said. “As a result, the splintered pole cut through Officer Rathbun’s knuckle, creating a deep cut. The laceration exposed a tendon in his finger, requiring further medical attention.”
Todd was forced out of the Capitol at 3:18 p.m., it said, then went to the Northwest Terrace. Over the next hour, Todd interacted with the crowd and shoved against police shields as officers tried to clear the northwest stairs, the document said.
“By 4:50 p.m., the defendant had moved towards the West Tunnel, where police had engaged in an hours-long physical conflict with the crowd,” it said. Todd leaned off railings and watched the violence occurring in the tunnel, then eventually left.
A Nov. 30 motion filed by Todd’s primary attorney, John Pierce — who has represented more than 20 Capitol riot defendants, including “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley — argued that the officer wasn’t badly injured and referred to the wound as a “tiny cut.”
“Suffice it to say that the ‘newly discovered’ bodycam video hardly shows an assault/resist/impeding of an officer with injuries,” the motion said. “In fact, the video shows an officer violently pulling Mr. Todd’s flimsy bamboo flag rod out of Mr. Todd’s grip where the officer appears to mildly cut his own palm after unnecessarily breaking the rod.”
Todd argued in a later motion that the government filed the felony charge “vindictively, to punish and retaliate against Todd and his attorneys for refusing to plead guilty.”
Todd wanted to include in his defense the allegation that the FBI and other law enforcement officers played a role in provoking the riot. Howell rejected that argument in a Jan. 10 ruling, saying Todd had provided “no evidence supporting any element of the defense.”
She said he offered “only the theory, without a scintilla of evidence, that ‘there were many, soon to be revealed, lesser-known agents of the DOJ, particularly but not limited to the FBI (also including other undercover law enforcement, plainclothes officers, counter protestors and/or Antifa actors) who provoked’ him.”
Howell continued: “’[S]oon to be revealed’ means this evidence remains nonexistent on the record in this case. Fictional courtroom dramas may build suspense for surprise ‘reveals,’ but this defendant is facing real charges in a real courtroom requiring real evidence… Defendant’s argument relies so-far on only hypothetical statements that are hypothetically misleading and that defendant hypothetically relied on, made by hypothetical individuals who hypothetically had the responsibility to interpret the relevant law. Such imagining may play well in some fora but not in a court of law.”
Howell also shot down Todd’s request that the government produce “all records and other discovery relating to two charter buses which arrived at Union Station on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, full of Trump supporters with knee pads and elbow pads.”
According to Todd’s motion, “These dozens of men were seen dispersing in the direction of the Capitol and were likely materially crucial to later events at the Capitol, including events in which Todd was involved.”
That theory surfaced at a congressional hearing in November, when U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican, suggested the FBI sent “ghost buses” filled with informants dressed as Trump supporters to incite the riot.
Howell agreed with the government’s contention that Todd’s request amounted to “little more than a fishing expedition fueled by conspiracy theories.”
“Defendant points to nothing, except passing conjecture by a member of Congress, that would explain how U.S. Attorney’s Office employees or the ‘two charter buses’ have any connection to his own conduct on January 6, 2021,” she wrote.
The case has had other odd twists as well. Todd had been free on a personal recognizance bond after his arrest, but in April 2023 he was caught scaling a building while in possession of knives and razor blades. Prosecutors said he was trying “to gain access to a person” with whom he was upset.
Prosecutors said his bond should be revoked and he should be sent to jail. They said he also had previously violated his conditions of release by possessing a firearm while experiencing acute mental health concerns.
In a response, Pierce said Todd was an Afghanistan combat veteran who was dealing with combat-related PTSD. Instead of sending Todd to jail, a federal magistrate judge granted his request to move to South Carolina to live with his sister and her husband until his trial.
