If U.S. District Senior Judge Reggie Walton tries to reimpose the monitoring of Jan. 6 probationer Daniel Goodwyn’s computer for “disinformation,” it would violate an appeals court order and be an “affront to liberty,” a defense attorney wrote in a new court filing.
The U.S. Department of Justice has until May 24 to respond to Ms. Stewart’s filing. A status conference in the case is set for June 4 in Washington.
Mr. Goodwyn, 35, of San Francisco, pleaded guilty on Jan. 31, 2023, to one misdemeanor count of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds without lawful authority. The charge could have meant up to a year in prison.
On June 6, 2023, Judge Walton sentenced Mr. Goodwyn to 60 days in prison, a year of supervised release, a $2,500 fine, and a $500 restitution payment. Mr. Goodwyn completed his incarceration at the Federal Correctional Institution at Bastrop, Texas, on Aug. 25, 2023.
Mr. Goodwyn entered the U.S. Capitol through the Senate Wing Door at 3:32 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021, and spent 36 seconds inside the building, security video showed.
“Since he has used social media in order to provide what I consider to be disinformation about this situation,” the judge said, “I would require that he permit his computer use to be subject to monitoring and inspection by the probation department to see if he is, in fact, disseminating information of the nature that relates to the events that resulted in what occurred on January 6th of 2021.”
The “disinformation” and “misinformation” cited by Judge Walton included the contention that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent, that excessive force was used by police on Jan. 6 against protesters, and that only supporters of former President Donald J. Trump died at the Capitol that day.
Use of Force
“Judge Walton again said he knew nothing of assaults by police or that they acted excessively,” Ms. Stewart wrote. “It is a fact that without the required warning, the police fired less-lethal munitions into the crowd—to include those peacefully praying.Protesters died who did nothing violent that day, Ms. Stewart said, “and the court stated it knew nothing of this, showing that censorship prevents exposing truth.”
Judge Walton is one of numerous District of Columbia judges and politicians who have made their own questionable or false claims about Jan. 6 over the past three years. U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), head of the now-defunct Jan. 6 Select Committee, said in a televised hearing in 2022 that two police officers died on Jan. 6. President Joe Biden repeated the same error.
A false story circulated in 2021 and has been repeated many times since that U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was killed by a rioter wielding a fire extinguisher. Mr. Sicknick died on Jan. 7 after suffering two strokes.
The D.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled that his death was from natural causes.
“The Court wanted to add itself as a content and viewpoint censor for Mr. Goodwyn without legal cause, while only hearing the misinformation and partial truths that the DOJ and legacy media disseminate,” Ms. Stewart wrote.
Ms. Stewart has referred to Judge Walton as the “Ministry of Truth.”
“January 6 defendants are largely being prohibited from presenting truth in the courtrooms, and now the court asks Mr. Goodwyn to justify why the court should not monitor, record, surveil, censor, and chill by threat of prison all speech by Mr. Goodwyn in any way related to January 6th,” she said.
Mr. Goodwyn’s conviction had nothing to do with using a computer, Ms. Stewart wrote, something that would have to be a predicate if a judge wanted to impose computer monitoring.
Neither federal prosecutors nor the pretrial services department asked Judge Walton to impose monitoring of Mr. Goodwyn’s computer, Ms. Stewart said.
Such monitoring would expose Mr. Goodwyn’s journalism work for StopHate.com, his private client website work, and personal communications to the chilling effect of censorship, she said.
No law “allows the U.S. government to censor viewpoints and place private U.S. citizens in prison for viewpoints the government finds disagreeable,” she wrote. “Those cheering on Hamas terrorism against Israel have not been charged criminally.
‘Dezinformatsiya’
“It originates from the old Soviet Union intelligence agency and the operational term ‘dezinformatsiya’ (alternately maskirovka) for state-sponsored campaigns to deceive enemies,“ she said. ”Mr. Goodwyn has never deliberately posted false information and never worked for any intelligence agency.”Mr. Goodwyn used a bullhorn outside the Capitol to ask others to go inside but was ignored, Ms. Stewart wrote.
“Mr. Goodwyn was not live-streaming or exhorting anyone to riot or knowingly act illegally,” she said. “Mr. Goodwyn did not use a computer to do anything illegal before, on, or after January 6, 2021.
“Mr. Goodwyn did not use a computer or his phone as part of the trespass violation he pled guilty to under Section 1752(a)(1): entering or remaining in a restricted building.”
Ms. Stewart said the FBI labeled her client a “domestic terrorist” to “enhance its authority to investigate without warrants and subpoenas.”
“Without probable cause or warrant the FBI continues to spy on him and January 6th defendants by use of software tools and agents for web crawling to scour the internet and social media for their faces, names, handles, posts, and even un-consented tags by other people,” she said.
