The lawyer for two Tucson-area siblings accused of rioting at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 says his clients’ “vulnerabilities” shaped their actions.
The FBI accused Felicia Konold, a 27-year-old Marana resident, and her brother Cory Konold, a 25-year-old Tucson resident, of marching with a large group of Proud Boys, a far-right group that supported former President Donald Trump, to the Capitol. The FBI said the Konold siblings were at the forefront of rioters who overwhelmed police and forced their way into the Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote.
The Konolds’ lawyer, Albert Watkins, said the siblings and other defendants he has spoken to are dealing with “vulnerabilities,” ranging from childhood trauma to physical injuries, that “played a role in their presence in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6 and their actions on Jan. 6.”
Watkins said he could not discuss the specific effect those vulnerabilities had on the Konold siblings’ actions, but he noted Felicia Konold was “involved in a horrendous, near-death automobile accident in 2020 from which she is still recovering.”
The results of the car wreck on Felicia Konold “included substantial brain trauma,” Watkins said. “That comes on the heels of approximately 16 concussions over the course of her young life breaking horses.”
Federal prosecutors have charged more than 400 people in the riot. In many of those cases, including the charges against the Konolds, authorities presented photos and video from surveillance cameras and the rioters’ social media accounts as evidence.
The Konolds were charged with conspiracy, civil disorder, obstruction of an official proceeding, knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, according to a complaint filed in federal court in Washington, D.C.
The Associated Press identified at least a dozen cases where defendants claimed they did not go to the Capitol with the intention of rioting. Instead, they say they got caught up in the hysteria or were forced inside the Capitol by the mob. Others say they were following directions from Trump or they had “Foxmania” or “Foxitis,” essentially an overdose of Fox News.
Watkins spoke with the Arizona Daily Star after he used a wide array of vulgarities in a May 18 interview with Talking Points Memo, which prompted widespread news coverage.
“A lot of these defendants — and I’m going to use this colloquial term, perhaps disrespectfully — but they’re all f—-ing short-bus people,” Watkins told Talking Points Memo. “These are people with brain damage, they’re f—-ing retarded, they’re on the goddamn spectrum.”
“But they’re our brothers, our sisters, our neighbors, our coworkers — they’re part of our country,” Watkins said on May 18. “These aren’t bad people, they don’t have prior criminal history. F—-, they were subjected to four-plus years of goddamn propaganda the likes of which the world has not seen since f—-ing Hitler.”
Those comments were meant to shine a light on “people with vulnerabilities who were caught up in our criminal justice system,” he told the Star on Friday.
“I made comments by design that were disparaging, vulgar and unattractive,” he said. “And through the use of those vulgarities, I was able to navigate in 24 to 48 hours that which I was unable to navigate for five months.”
Three days after his comments, a federal judge agreed with a request from Watkins and ordered a psychological examination of his client Jacob Chansley, a Phoenix man charged in connection with the Jan. 6 riot who described himself as the shaman of the Qanon conspiracy. He has been held in solitary confinement for most of the past few months, Watkins said.
The Konolds are not in custody. No such request or order for a psychological examination has been made in their case as of Friday afternoon.
Watkins said the Konold siblings went to Washington, D.C. as “tourists,” rather than part of a conspiracy.
“They don’t go there to go to the Ellipse and hear Trump; in fact, he (Cory) is an avowed Democrat,” Watkins said. “They go to D.C. literally as tourists because they know this is going to be an event.”
“They didn’t plan anything with anyone. They didn’t conspire with anyone. They didn’t know anyone in Washington, D.C.,” Watkins said. “They literally parked their car and walked around and met individuals who were polite and nice, protective, who literally took them under their wing.”
The Konold siblings were not violent or destructive and they were “respectful of law enforcement,” he said.
The FBI says video shows Felicia Konold marching with a large group of Proud Boys as the crowd chanted “Whose streets? Our streets!” The same group eventually arrived at a pedestrian entrance to the Capitol grounds. Both Felicia and Cory Konold “moved to the front of the crowd during the initial confrontation” with a small number of U.S. Capitol Police standing behind a waist-high metal barrier, the FBI says.
The crowd quickly overwhelmed the police officers and toppled metal barricades as it moved toward the Capitol, according to a criminal complaint. Minutes later, Felicia and Cory Konold “had moved past the barrier and placed themselves at or near the front of the crowd at the next police barrier.”
The rioters overwhelmed another line of police officers, again with the Konolds at the front of the crowd, and entered the Capitol building, the complaint says. Police officers tried to lower metal barriers in the tunnels underneath the building, but authorities say Felicia Konold and others pushed against the barriers to keep them from closing. Some in the crowd put a podium and a chair under the barriers to prop them open and allow more rioters to enter the building.
In one video posted on social media, the woman the FBI believed was Felicia Konold said she was “watching the news guys” and “Dude, I can’t even put into words,” according to the complaint.
“I never could (unintelligible) have imagined having that much of an influence on the events that unfolded today. Dude, people were willing to follow,” the complaint quotes her as saying.
She described going through three lines of police in the crowd, saying “my feet weren’t even on the ground, all my boys, behind me, holding me up in the air, pushing back,” according to the complaint.
The FBI said a video showed Felicia Konold “celebrated that she had just been ‘recruited’” into a Proud Boys chapter from Kansas City and displayed a “two-sided ‘challenge coin’ that appears to have markings that designate it as belonging to the Kansas City Proud Boys,” according to the complaint.
Watkins said the only connection between Felicia Konold and the Proud Boys was that one of the men she met in Washington, D.C., gave her a coin.
“You have to remember one thing, these two siblings, they’re Jewish,” Watkins said. “Proud Boys are a fascist organization that are not known for tolerance of Semites.”
The Anti-Defamation League describes the group as white supremacists, which group leaders have denied. The Southern Poverty Law Center labels the Proud Boys as a hate group.
The three defendants charged at the same time as the Konold siblings were Christopher Kuehne, William Chrestman and Louis Enrique Colon, all residents of Kansas City.
Watkins’ comments on May 18 prompted Marina Medvin, the lawyer representing Kuehne, to ask a federal judge to separate Kuehne’s case from the Konolds’ case. Medvin argued that Kuehne would not receive a fair trial if he is connected to defendants whose lawyer “demeans” them.
“Unlike his co-defendants, Mr. Kuehne’s defense strategy does not include self-degradation, nor an insanity plea,” Medvin wrote in a court filing.
“A joint trial also poses a serious risk that the jury will be compromised in making a reliable judgment about the guilt or innocence of Mr. Kuehne after co-defendants’ counsel has demeaned his mental abilities publicly and has previewed how he plans to present his clients’ defense moving forward,” Medvin wrote.
The judge has not yet ruled on Medvin’s request.
