
Kansas man charged in Capitol attack included the edited mugshot in request for permission to attend Trump inauguration
A Topeka man who blocked officers in the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, pleaded with a federal court to attend President-elect Donald Trump’s swearing-in ceremony later this month and offered haunting Christmas wishes.
William Pope, who is representing himself in the U.S. District Court for Washington D.C., asked a judge on Dec. 28 to allow him to travel to Washington to attend Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration. The request came after he successfully delayed his trial with the expectation of receiving a presidential pardon once Trump takes office.
In a separate filing from Dec. 25, Pope quoted scripture and Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol,” marking his case’s fourth Christmas spent without resolution.
“For four years you have crushed the lives of peaceful Americans,” Pope said in the Dec. 25 filing. “In doing so, you have attacked our Constitutional rights. Putting me in chains was your biggest mistake. You will be haunted by these chains you have forged for yourselves.”
At the end of the document, Pope attached an edited copy of his mugshot from his February 2021 arrest, with superimposed images of a Santa Claus hat, sunglasses, a chain necklace and a marijuana joint. The photo’s caption read, “I AM YOUR GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE.”
A federal judge put Pope’s long-awaited trial on hold in November, citing a desire to conserve resources for the case’s parties, the court and any potential jurors or witnesses, according to a court transcript.
Pope requested the delay following the 2024 election, and argued his jury “was the entire American public,” and voters favored Trump. He also expressed concern that he wouldn’t receive a fair jury because most D.C. residents voted for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Pope has traveled twice to Washington for case-related matters, according to the court record. After his indictment and arrest, he was not required to post bond, but he does have to comply with pretrial supervision terms, including a restriction on possessing firearms.
“Allowing William Pope to return to Washington, D.C., specifically the Capitol building, could put him face to face with the officers that he resisted four years ago and place him in the same circumstance in which he already demonstrated a disregard for the law,” said U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves in a response to Pope’s request to attend the inauguration.
Graves wrote in the Thursday filing that the most compelling reason to deny Pope’s request to travel was to prevent potential danger to the community and Capitol police officers.
In Pope’s second of two filings on Thursday, he pointed to a similar federal case involving a Missouri man, Eric Lee Peterson, who pleaded guilty to charges related to his actions at the Capitol and was permitted to attend the inauguration.
A judge hadn’t filed a decision on Pope’s request to travel as of Friday afternoon.
This article was republished from the Kansas Reflector under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. You can read the original article here.