While attorneys for William Norman Chrestman are arguing that he was merely following former President Trump’s direction when he stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, a former state and federal prosecutor thinks there are better defenses.
“The defendant has to admit knowingly committing a criminal act but that he did so in reasonable reliance on some grant of authority from a government official,” said Patrick A. McInerney, a former state prosecutor, and Western District of Missouri assistant U.S. Attorney. “Would it be reasonable for the defendant to believe they had been granted the authority by the president to engage in illegal activity? That's a really tough equation.”
McInerney is currently a partner with Spencer Fane.
Allegations against Chrestman, an Olathe native, include threatening a Capitol police officer and overthrowing preventive barriers so that the Capitol could be breached by the crowd, according to NBC.
“He has to have believed that what he was doing was illegal but he had permission to do it and that belief has to be reasonable not to him but to 12 people sitting in a jury box,” McInerney told the St. Louis Record.
As previously reported, Chrestman served in the U.S. Army four years, earned a high school diploma, attended college classes as well as a trade school.
“The 'following orders' defense doesn’t work but on the other hand if he is predisposed to following orders of a commander in chief without asking questions, that might be effective,” McInerney said. “He might leverage that by saying ‘President Trump was my commander-in-chief and even though I was not active military, I’m not used to saying no to my commander in chief.'"
Louis Enrique Colon of Blue Springs and Christopher Kuehne of Olathe were also charged. All three are allegedly members of the Kansas City chapter of the nationalist group Proud Boys.
“Law enforcement is going to work really hard at gathering a lot of evidence in this case and the defendants are going to be faced with really difficult situations but they could try to raise the defense that they believed President Trump had the authority to tell them to do that but then to admit they were wrong about it,” McInerney said. “If they reasonably believed that at the time, then they may not have had the intent that is required to be convicted.”