While a number of January 6 "insurrectionists" are still in D.C. jail awaiting trial, all charges have been dropped against a group of Hollywood leftists who were caught in June hanging out inside the U.S. Capitol after being told to leave.
Seven staffers with comedian Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show were nabbed filming after-hours in the Longworth House Office Building despite having been instructed to leave the building by Capitol police. The group was reportedly there cover the January 6 hearings, but were denied access because they didn’t have proper press credentials.
According to reports, the team initially left the building but was let back in by someone with Rep. Adam Schiff’s office. The group was later arrested around 8:30 p.m. while harassing Republican lawmakers and taking pictures and videos outside the office doors of GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, purportedly for a segment of “Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.”
Jake Plunkett, Allison Martinez, Tyrone Dean, Stephen Romond, Nicoletta Green, Brendan Hurley, Robert Smigel, Josh Comers and David Feldman all spent the night in jail before being released the next morning and charged with misdemeanor unlawful entry – a charge Colbert himself later mocked as “first degree puppetry.”
But those charges have since been dropped, after the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia said it would be hard to get a conviction in court.
Related: Multi-Millionaire Stephen Colbert Says He's 'Willing' To Pay $4 a Gallon For a 'Clean Conscience'
"After a comprehensive review of all of the evidence and the relevant legal authority, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia has determined that it cannot move forward with misdemeanor charges of unlawful entry against the nine individuals who were arrested on June 16, 2022 at the Longworth Office Building. The individuals, who entered the building on two separate occasions, were invited by Congressional staffers to enter the building in each instance and were never asked to leave by the staffers who invited them, though, members of the groups had been told at various points by the U.S. Capitol Police that they were supposed to have an escort," the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia said in a statement Monday night.
"The office would be required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that these invited guests were guilty of the crime of unlawful entry because their escort chose to leave them unattended. We do not believe it is probably that the Office would be able to obtain and sustain convictions on these charges. The defendants will no longer be required to appear for a scheduled hearing in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia on July 20, 2022.”