London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Wednesday, Oct 15, 2025

The Man Photographed With His Foot On Nancy Pelosi’s Desk During The Capitol Riots Will Be Released From Jail

The Man Photographed With His Foot On Nancy Pelosi’s Desk During The Capitol Riots Will Be Released From Jail

Richard Barnett was ordered to remain in jail in January, but a judge ruled Tuesday that his case now was too similar to those of other defendants who were allowed to go home.

Richard Barnett, an Arkansas man photographed with his foot on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk during the Capitol insurrection, will be allowed to go home as his case goes forward, a judge ruled Tuesday, reversing a January order that had kept him behind bars.

Barnett is one of the most high-profile defendants charged in connection with the Jan. 6 riots to date. The photos of him smiling as he sat in Pelosi’s office went viral, as did a video of him outside the Capitol in which he told a reporter that he’d left a note that read, “Nancy, Bigo was here, you bitch.” At a hearing in late January, a federal judge in Washington, DC, ordered Barnett to remain in jail, concluding that his “entitled behavior ... shows a total disregard for the law and for officials' directives.”

But the legal landscape surrounding the Capitol riot cases has changed in the last three months, and Barnett made another attempt at getting out of jail. This time, citing recent developments in the hundreds of prosecutions filed since his arrest on Jan. 8 and appearing before a different judge, he succeeded. US District Judge Christopher Cooper concluded that prosecutors had failed to show that Barnett posed a specific future threat to public safety that couldn’t be addressed by restrictive release conditions.

Throughout the hearing, Cooper expressed skepticism about arguments Barnett’s lawyer made challenging the strength of the government’s evidence. Cooper said that information presented by prosecutors about Barnett’s apparent connection to the QAnon mass delusion and involvement in QAnon-affiliated demonstrations in which he was armed was “concerning.” But a March opinion from the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, which set the bar higher for pretrial detention for Jan. 6 defendants who aren’t charged with specific acts of violence, ultimately worked in Barnett’s favor, Cooper said; he announced his decision shortly after hearing arguments.

The note Barnett is alleged to have left on Pelosi's desk on Jan. 6.

Barnett’s situation wasn’t different enough from those of the defendants in the DC Circuit case, Eric Munchel and Lisa Eisenhart, Cooper said. Munchel and Barnett were both charged with carrying stun guns into the Capitol, but they weren’t accused of assaulting anyone or destroying property. The government argued that Barnett had tried to conceal evidence — his phone and the walking stick–shaped stun gun he brought to the Capitol were never recovered — but Cooper said at most this indicated “consciousness of guilt” or some risk of flight, not that he was dangerous, which was the standard the government was trying to meet.

Cooper did make clear that he was unimpressed by an argument Joseph McBride, Barnett’s lawyer, made linking the events of Jan. 6 with protests against racism and police brutality the previous year.


“The notion that the events of January 6 were a legitimate or excusable social protest against ruling elites or, worse yet, a reaction to some people in society feeling that they have been unfairly scapegoated for racism is, in a word, absurd,” Cooper said.

Barnett will be released to home detention and prohibited from having any weapons in his home — including stun guns, Cooper noted. The judge warned Barnett that the decision to allow him to go home wasn’t a sign that he’d be lenient if he later pleaded guilty or went to trial and was convicted. Cooper said he’d look at Barnett’s compliance with his release conditions in crafting any sentence. ”Consider this a test, okay?” he said. Barnett, who was appearing remotely from jail for the virtual hearing and had been silent while his lawyer argued, thanked the judge.

It’s the latest setback for the US attorney’s office in Washington since the DC Circuit’s ruling in Munchel and Eisenhart’s case. Prosecutors in some cases have dropped efforts to keep defendants behind bars in the weeks since the appeals court released the opinion, and judges in some cases — but not all — have handed the government losses when prosecutors pressed ahead with seeking detention.

Pretrial detention isn’t supposed to be punishment for a crime that a defendant hasn’t been convicted of yet; judges are only supposed to keep someone in jail if they meet certain criteria, including if they pose a flight risk or danger to the public or risk obstructing the case. Cooper noted that the DC Circuit held in Munchel’s case that participation in the insurrection on its own wasn’t enough to justify detention and that the government hadn’t shown Barnett posed a “concrete danger” any more than others who also believed in QAnon and had access to firearms.

Assistant US Attorney Mary Dohrmann told Cooper that she hadn’t formally extended a plea offer to Barnett but had been in early talks with his lawyer about that possibility. A federal grand jury returned a seven-count indictment against Barnett in late January; Dohrmann said on Tuesday that his estimated sentencing guidelines range for those charges is between 70 and 87 months in prison, although that could change if he ended up pleading guilty and cooperating. The first plea agreement in the Capitol riot cases was revealed earlier this month.

A spokesperson for the US attorney’s office declined to comment. Barnett’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment after the hearing.

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Erika Kirk Delivers Moving Tribute at White House as Trump Awards Charlie Presidential Medal of Freedom
British Food Influencer ‘Big John’ Detained in Australia After Visa Dispute
ScamBodia: The Chinese Fraud Empire Shielded by Cambodia’s Ruling Elite
French PM Suspends Macron’s Pension Reform Until After 2027 in Bid to Stabilize Government
Orange, Bouygues and Free Make €17 Billion Bid for Drahi’s Altice France Telecom Assets
Dutch Government Seizes Chipmaker After U.S. Presses for Removal of Chinese CEO
Bessent Accuses China of Dragging Down Global Economy Amid New Trade Curbs
U.S. Revokes Visas of Foreign Nationals Who ‘Celebrated’ Charlie Kirk’s Assassination
AI and Cybersecurity at Forefront as GITEX Global 2025 Kicks Off in Dubai
DJI Loses Appeal to Remove Pentagon’s ‘Chinese Military Company’ Label
EU Deploys New Biometric Entry/Exit System: What Non-EU Travelers Must Know
Australian Prime Minister’s Private Number Exposed Through AI Contact Scraper
Ex-Microsoft Engineer Confirms Famous Windows XP Key Was Leaked Corporate License, Not a Hack
China’s lesson for the US: it takes more than chips to win the AI race
Australia Faces Demographic Risk as Fertility Falls to Record Low
California County Reinstates Mask Mandate in Health Facilities as Respiratory Illness Risk Rises
Israel and Hamas Agree to First Phase of Trump-Brokered Gaza Truce, Hostages to Be Freed
French Political Turmoil Elevates Marine Le Pen as Rassemblement National Poised for Power
China Unveils Sweeping Rare Earth Export Controls to Shield ‘National Security’
The Davos Set in Decline: Why the World Economic Forum’s Power Must Be Challenged
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
×