John Sullivan, founder of Insurgence USA, was charged in early February with a host of offenses, including two felonies related to obstruction during Congress’s attempts to count and confirm President Biden’s Electoral College victory over former President Donald Trump.
Video taken by the 25-year-old revealed him following and helping Trump supporters from the entrance of the Capitol to the time when 35-year-old Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran and Trump supporter who tried to climb through a window into the Speaker's Lobby, was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer.
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In claiming he was a journalist and not an agent provocateur, Sullivan’s lawyer, Steven Kiersh, presented four statements purportedly from major broadcasters, exposing a $35,000 payment to Sullivan from CNN for video license practice traversing from Jan. 6 through Jan. 13, a $35,000 payment from NBCUniversal Media dated Jan. 27, a $5,000 undated payment for “footage of the siege of the Capitol” indicating his Twitter page to be used on Showtime’s The Circus: Inside the Greatest Political Show on Earth, and a $2,375 payment from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation dated Jan. 27.
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The Justice Department previously explained how Sullivan allegedly broke a Utah judge’s terms of release, including accessing three of his Twitter accounts in violation of the court’s instructions, ridiculing the supervision officer’s instructions by buying a new phone, appearing on InfoWars to justify his actions, and to urge people to follow his group, and mass emailing his Insurgence USA members to “Pack The Courtroom."
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"Insurgence USA is not deemed to have been involved in any criminal activity," Sullivan's lawyer claimed Tuesday as he added the media invoices. "Defendant is legitimately self-employed as a documentarian and it is oppressive to require that he not be allowed to continue his primary area of employment for an extended period of time."
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His lawyer added: “The government is seeking to limit his use of the internet and to expressly prohibit him from using the following: Twitter, Facebook, encrypted platforms. The requests by the United States to limit the defendant's ability to communicate the way the vast majority of Americans communicate is oppressive, overbroad, and unconstitutional. The government’s request for limitations on the defendant's right to use social media is not reasonably related to the crimes for which he has been indicted.”
The Justice Department previously unsuccessfully tried to have him jailed pending trial for seemingly violating the terms of his release, and a Washington, D.C.-based magistrate judge on Tuesday denied DOJ’s attempts to ban Sullivan from social media altogether, though he was ordered to disassociate himself from his Insurgence USA group while under house detention awaiting a possible trial.
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