WASHINGTON (CN) — Detained since June as he awaits trial for assaulting police in the Jan. 6 insurrection, Brian Mock made a rookie mistake in court last month when he asked for a second detention hearing.
“I have found flat-out lies, fraud,” Mock told U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg. “At this point I can't prove all of it. This is not me being crazy, not me being some extremist.”
Boasberg had to remind Mock multiple times, however, that the procedure he needs to follow is a motion for bond review. There is no such thing as a second detention hearing — something a lawyer could have told him.
Mock, who shoved two police officers to the ground during the riot, claims he hasn’t been properly represented by his public defender and wants to represent himself so that he can bring forward evidence of FBI misconduct and conspiracy. Before traveling to Washington for the insurrection, Mock would write on Facebook later, he had said goodbye to his four children in Minnesota, accepting that his bid to overthrow the U.S. government could cost him his life.
“In rare circumstances, there is sympathy from a juror,” explained Bill Purpura, a criminal defense attorney in Baltimore, regarding pro se representation. “But normally it’s a complete failure, especially if they adopt the ‘sovereign citizen’ theory.”
The conspiracy theory is one started by a group of anti-government extremists who purport to be “sovereign” from the United States — meaning not subject to any government authority, and are free of any legal constraints — despite living there.
One prominent Jan. 6 defendant who has bought into the theory is Pauline Bauer, who is not accused of engaging in any violence at the Capitol riot but is being jailed pending trial because she refuses to comply with simple release conditions and repeatedly argues with the judge during her hearings. Calling herself a sovereign citizen, the Pennsylvania pizzeria owner has refused a public defender and regularly snubs input from her standby counsel.
“I am Pauline from the house of Bauer. I am a woman and a living soul,” Bauer said at her last hearing, going on to quote from the Bible and reaffirm that she will not abide by release conditions.
All of the motions Bauer had filed thus far, consisting of hundreds of pages of gibberish, have been quickly dismissed by U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden.
“You have a powerful advocate on your behalf, whether you want her or not,” McFadden said to Bauer regarding Bauer's standby counsel, Carmen Hernandez.
Bauer allowed Hernandez, after spending a week in lockup, to file a motion to reconsider detention. At the ensuing hearing, however, she began by insisting that Hernandez does not speak for her and refused to read from the legal brief Hernandez had prepared.
McFadden sent Bauer back to jail, where she will likely remain until her trial.
“In these cases, like Carmen has, you have some people who have some very extreme ideas,” Purpura said in a phone interview, referring to Hernandez. “And the sovereign citizens movement may appeal to them with their extreme bends.”
Judge McFadden is presiding over the prosecution of another Capitol rioter who has been denied bond in Washington ahead of trial. Coming away from two weeks in the jail library, Brandon Fellows told the court he planned to represent himself against five criminal counts, including a felony that carries up to 20 years in prison.
“Although, as Justice Blackmun says, I may be a fool to represent myself, I am nowhere near as big a fool as Joe Biden,” Fellows told McFadden, before asking the judge how to pronounce “pro se,” the Latin term indicating self-representation.