BY: ANNA KAMINSKI
Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — A federal judge granted a request to delay the trial of a Topeka man who blocked officers during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol building.
William Pope, who is representing himself in the case charging him with federal crimes in connection with his actions on Jan. 6, requested a trial delay on Nov. 8, citing President-elect Donald Trump’s victory and concerns over a fair jury.
Trump promised throughout his third presidential campaign to pardon those criminally charged Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol if he were to be reelected. Pope was one of many defendants pursuing case changes following Trump’s win.
Judge Rudolph Contreras for the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., was sympathetic to Pope’s arguments during a Thursday hearing, which culminated in Contreras granting Pope’s motion to delay the trial.
A new trial date was not set.
Contreras said he’d been considering motions like Pope’s on a case-by-case basis, according to an official transcript of the Thursday hearing.
In his original motion, Pope argued his jury “was the entire American public, and they voted for a mandate to set me free.” He also expressed concerns that his case wouldn’t be heard by a fair jury because the vast majority of D.C. residents voted for Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.
Contreras said he was focused on the conservation of resources for the case’s parties, the court and any potential jurors or witnesses, according to the transcript.
“I don’t want them to bring in 70 people or so just to have it go for naught, which there’s a real possibility of,” Contreras said. “Of course, it’s speculative, but there is a real possibility of that happening.”
Federal prosecutors opposed any delay. Benet Kearney with the U.S. Attorney’s Office said during Thursday’s hearing that the case could be efficiently tried if it proceeded as scheduled. Instead, it was Pope’s “insistence of going down, kind of, a side rabbit hole that has the potential to drag this out,” Benet said.
“And so this is a manufactured situation by the defendant, you know?” she said.
Pope’s case has dragged on since he was indicted in February 2021, jailed in Shawnee County that same month and released on his own recognizance in early March 2021. His July 2024 trial date was delayed to weigh the possible impacts of a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June that threw out charges against a former Pennsylvania police officer who also participated in the Jan. 6 attack.
The parties are scheduled to meet again in December to set a future trial date.