Judge Demands Answers After Rioter Recants Regrets

Politico reports:

A Jan. 6 defendant’s boast in an interview this week that he had no regrets about his role in the Capitol riot — just days after he acknowledged his guilt in a federal courtroom — may upend the man’s efforts to resolve the criminal case against him.

U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta issued an order Friday instructing defendant Thomas Adams Jr. and prosecutors to explain why the guilty findings the judge entered on Tuesday, following a brief “stipulated” bench trial should not be overturned in light of Adams’ comments to a reporter the following day.

“I wouldn’t change anything I did,” Adams told the State Journal-Register Wednesday outside his home in Springfield, Ill. “I didn’t do anything. I still to this day, even though I had to admit guilt [in the stipulation], don’t feel like I did what the charge is.”

The AP reported on this issue just today:

Appearing before a federal judge after pleading guilty to a felony charge in the deadly Capitol riot, former West Virginia lawmaker Derrick Evans expressed remorse for letting down his family and his community, saying he made a “crucial mistake.”

Less than a year later, Evans is portraying himself as a victim of a politically motivated prosecution as he runs to serve in the same building he stormed on Jan. 6, 2021. Evans is now calling the Justice Department’s Jan. 6 prosecutions a “miscarriage of justice” and describes himself on twitter as a “J6 Patriot.”

Evans joins a series of Jan. 6 defendants who — when up against possible prison time in court — have expressed regret for joining the pro-Trump mob that rattled the foundations of American democracy only to strike a different tone or downplay the riot after receiving their punishment.

The mugshot above is from Adams’ 2016 conviction on drug charges. Adams has a long criminal record and has spent four years in an Illinois prison.