Lawyer for Podium Thief Doesn’t Pull Any Punches Assessing Client’s Risk

The events of January 6th will be with Americans for quite some time into the future, thanks in no small part to the glut of unforgettable images that it conjured.

Not only did we find ourselves inundated with the official images coming from the standard cadre of photojournalists, but the sheer amount of folks who were comfortable using their personal cameras to document their illegal actions was astounding.  The air inside the Capitol really didn’t look at that tense during the insurrection.  Instead, it had all the nonchalance of a mural designed for social media selfies.

Epitomizing this laissez faire attitude was a young man from Florida who was seen gleefully scampering about with an official congressional lectern, smiling and waving to the cameras with not a care in the world about the consequences of his actions.

That man now been arrested, and his lawyer’s assessment of the evidence is blunt, to put it lightly. 

“You have a photograph of our client in a building, unauthorized to be there, with what appears to be a podium or a lectern, I’m not exactly sure which one it is called. But that’s what we have,’’ said Dan Eckhart, a lawyer for suspect Adam Johnson, according to Twitter posts of the footage.

A reporter can be heard saying to Eckhart, “Obviously, that’s a problem for you as a defense attorney.’’

The lawyer responds, “Yes, I don’t know how else to explain that.

“But yeah, that would be a problem. I’m not a magician,’’ he said. “So yeah, we’ve got a photograph of our client in what appears to be inside a federal building or inside the Capitol with federal property.’’

Johnson was previously infamous online after the unforgettable image above was shared on social media, along with a caption “via Getty” – denoting the origin of the firm that owned the image.  Twitter users were soon convinced that Johnson’s name was “Via Getty”, as they called for his arrest online.