Federal courts and judges have repeatedly ordered that any evidence or exhibits tied to Jan. 6 cases be placed in an online portal. But some of those records have “disappeared” over the last week, according to a motion filed Tuesday in federal court.
At its peak, the portal contained tens of thousands of records including videos, images, testimony, audio recordings, text messages and more.
The Press Coalition, a group of 14 media organizations, first sought to secure all Jan. 6 trial records in 2021, resulting in a standing order for the Justice Department to preserve video exhibits from the attack on the U.S. Capitol in a portal known as USAfx. Journalists and lawyers alike can access the portal once the government grants them authorization.
But this week, the Press Coalition said video exhibits entered for at least one Capitol riot defendant, Glen Mitchell Simon, are missing. When the group asked the Justice Department about it, the department “offered no explanation for why these judicial records are no longer publicly accessible or whether any other Capitol riot records that were previously available on USAfx have disappeared as well,” according to the lawsuit.
The motion asks the court to order the Justice Department to restore Simon’s file to USAfx within 48 hours, explain why the records are missing and disclose whether any other videos or records were removed in violation of the 2021 court order. The coalition also wants the court to order that no other records be removed unless there is a formal request made to the judge, the Press Coalition is notified and permission is granted.
Simon pleaded guilty in 2022 to a number of charges, including disorderly conduct in a restricted building. Prosecutors said Simon, wearing a plated vest, helped whip up the crowd by screaming at police and cursing at them, calling them “spineless fucking oath-violating little fucking weasels.” They said he also urged fellow rioters to seek out members of Congress as he stalked the inside of the U.S. Capitol building for more than an hour on Jan. 6, 2021.
He was sentenced to eight months in prison in August 2022. The judge overseeing his case pointed out that he could have faced additional charges for lying to the FBI on at least two occasions, NBC News reported at the time.
Now Simon’s case file on USAfx is missing all nine videos that were entered into evidence.
“The video exhibits are judicial records subject to the public rights of access under the First Amendment and common law, and judges have determined, case by case, that the public is entitled to access each of the Video Exhibits,” the Press Coalition wrote Tuesday.
The coalition, which includes CNN, ABC, The Associated Press, CBS, NPR and The New York Times, notes that in the days since President Donald Trump first issued pardons and commutations for Jan. 6 rioters, federal judges have repeatedly hit back at Trump’s proclamation that his pardons were rectifying the “grave national injustice” that was investigating the attack on the Capitol and the subsequent 1,500-plus prosecutions that followed.
The coalition reminded the court of something U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman, who oversaw the case of former U.S. Marine Major Christopher Warnagiris, recently said about Jan. 6 charges. Warnagiris was convicted of assaulting police during the Capitol riot.
The charges were “fully supported by evidence in the form of extensive videotapes and photographs, admissions by defendants in the course of plea hearings and in testimony at trials, and the testimony of law enforcement officers and congressional staff present at the Capitol on that day,” Friedman said last month.
“This Court cannot let stand the revisionist myth relayed in this presidential pronouncement,” he added.
The right to access such evidence does not “dissipate merely because all of the Capitol Case defendants have been pardoned,” the Press Coalition’s lawyer, Charles Tobin, said. “To the contrary, the public interest in ensuring that the video exhibits remain available in the future is all the greater, given that these videos ‘are immutable and represent the truth, no matter how the events of January 6 are described by those charged or their allies.’”
The Justice Department under the Trump administration has been wiping evidence of rioters’ crimes from the internet since January.
The department did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.