Crazed Wall-Climbing Rioter Found Guilty Of All Charges At Trial

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Tennessee man Matthew Bledsoe was found guilty at trial this Thursday of all the criminal charges he was facing for participation in the Capitol riot.

The charges include one felony — obstruction of an official proceeding — which comes with up to 20 years in prison if found guilty, although shorter sentences are possible. Bledsoe presented distinctly ridiculous defenses in the course of his trial this week, where he testified in his defense. (Not every Capitol rioter who’s stood trial thus far testified.) Bledsoe entered the Capitol after climbing up a wall outside the building; after climbing the wall, he went in the Capitol through a fire door in the building’s Senate wing. Somehow, Bledsoe — apparently stricken with some kind of special ignorance — attempted to convince the jury listening to his questioning that his wall-climbing at the Capitol wasn’t actually all that extraordinary to him. He said where he lived was “quite a bit different” than Washington, D.C., adding he supposedly often climbed walls.

Was his defense that doors aren’t actually all they’re cracked up to be? Was he attempting to convince jurors Tennesseans sometimes just… climb walls to get inside buildings instead of going through the door? At another point, Bledsoe insisted he simply wasn’t being sincere and literal, it seems, when he previously said he “stormed the Capitol.” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jamie Carter questioned Bledsoe this week. “You do not ‘storm’ somewhere you have a right to be. I don’t ‘storm’ my friend’s house when I go over for dinner… He said he stormed the Capitol, and he meant it,” Carter remarked in court. Bledsoe also argued he didn’t know Congress was conducting the certification of the 2020 presidential election outcome when he entered the Capitol — the point of such an argument would seem to be ostensibly undercutting the notion he had the intent required for a charge of obstruction of an official proceeding. Yet, Bledsoe asked in a video he took at the Capitol: “Where are those pieces of s— at?”

Carter claimed in response to questioning that he wasn’t talking about members of Congress. He said he was referring to those he believed to be behind imaginary widespread election fraud — which isn’t a realistic argument, obviously. Why would these imaginary individuals have been essentially hiding out in the U.S. Capitol? Who does he think is at the Capitol in the course of routine business? Aliens? An attorney for Bledsoe argued in court in the course of his trial that it was after he saw tear gas inside the Capitol that “the scales fell from his eyes” and he became aware that he wasn’t supposed to be inside the Capitol. What? The defense was that Bledsoe was an inept buffoon and didn’t realize he wasn’t supposed to be in the Capitol until he saw tear gas… even though he previously entered the building through a door that had its glass damaged? What’s wrong with these people? As trials continue, arrests are also continuing — one recently arrested rioter had three of her friends provide info to authorities.