Should Missouri man have known he wasn’t allowed in the Capitol on Jan. 6? Judge to decide

Toward the end of Isaac Yoder’s time on the witness stand on Tuesday, Judge Royce Lamberth had a few questions.

Yoder is charged with four counts related to entering the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. His defense attorney had argued that Yoder had not seen any people breaking windows or doors at the Capitol and that no one in law enforcement had told him he couldn’t go into the building.

Lamberth, the senior judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, wanted to know whether Yoder had seen any people fighting with police before he entered the Capitol. Yoder said he had not.

The judge wanted to know whether Yoder had heard the alarm coming from the fire door he entered and whether he saw anyone going through the windows. Yoder said he saw people going through the windows and said the alarm wasn’t significant.

“An alarm was going off and you keep plowing on ahead?” Lamberth asked. “Two law enforcement officials and hundreds of people, what did you expect them to do?”

“I felt confident they had the situation under control,” Yoder said.

Yoder’s trial concluded on Tuesday, after two days of testimony. He’s charged with four counts related to entering the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but the primary charge — that he entered and remained in a restricted area — hinges on whether or not Yoder knew the building was closed that day.

John Machado, Yoder’s attorney, said his client wasn’t aware.

“Once things have died down, you’re not seeing the damage that was caused,” Machado said in his closing argument. “You’re seeing the results of the damage.”

Yoder’s case is a microcosm of a larger political argument pushed by Republicans — that some of the people who entered the Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack, did nothing wrong.

Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican who was photographed pumping his fist to a crowd before the attack, said Tuesday that he believed it was possible that someone who entered the Capitol that day might not have known that it was closed to the public, particularly if they’d never been to Washington.

“Most of these people expect the Capitol to be open. I mean, they assume it is, They don’t know,” Hawley said. “Now is that a defense? I mean, it depends on circumstances. If there’s clear signage that says no, then no, it’s not a defense. But if there’s no signage if cops are waving them in it probably is a defense.”

Yoder traveled to Washington that day dressed in a homemade Revolutionary War uniform to attend former President Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally. He told the court that he agreed with a sign that implied that Trump rightfully won the election.

Yoder said he had never before been to the Capitol. He said he was unaware that normally visitors are screened and that they aren’t allowed to carry large flag poles or have metal swords on them while in the building.

Machado argued that Yoder was not aware that the Capitol was closed to the public as Congress met to certify the Electoral College results even though the building had been closed for months because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said that because Yoder arrived after barricades around the building had been breached, after people had already broken through windows and people were streaming through a fire exit, and that Capitol Police never directly stopped him that he couldn’t have known that he wasn’t allowed in the building.

Machado focused on the fact that there were Capitol Police officers monitoring the large number of protesters who were entering the building through the fire exit or the windows as they waited for more officers in order to force them out.

“He walked in where it appeared he thought he could go,” Machado said.

Prosecutors spent the week attempting to show that Capitol Police officers were overwhelmed by the time Yoder entered the building. On Tuesday, former Capitol Police Lieutenant Dennis Kelly testified that he had witnessed fighting in several areas of the Capitol, and that he wasn’t equipped to stop people from coming into the building for some time.

“I don’t know how you would screen people coming through windows,” Kelly said.

In her closing argument, Sarah Rocha, a prosecuting attorney with the Department of Justice, said Yoder made an active choice to enter the Capitol that day.

She said he didn’t go to the Capitol until after his family members met him at the car and told him that “Pence had caved” and they had been pepper-sprayed and hit with rubber bullets.

“He knows he’s not supposed to be there,” Rocha said. All indicators are that there that this is not a place he was supposed to go.

It will be more than a month before the judge issues a ruling in the case.