Judge Reggie Walton: Political Speech Commissar

Federal judges in DC have used their unaccountable bully pulpits to literally bully January 6 defendants and trash talk Donald Trump from the bench. But Judge Reggie Walton just jumped the shark.

Reggie Walton was hopping mad—again.

During a court hearing last year, Walton, a 75-year-old senior judge on the U.S. district court in Washington, fumed over an interview an individual named Daniel Goodwyn had given to then Fox News host Tucker Carlson to describe the government’s harsh treatment of January 6 defendants.

Goodwyn, a Texas man who suffers from autism spectrum disorder, entered the Capitol building on the afternoon of January 6 and remained inside the doorway for less than a minute. Goodwyn committed no violence, destroyed no property, and assaulted no one. Nonetheless, FBI counterterrorism agents arrested Goodwyn in January 2021; the Department of Justice indicted Goodwyn the following month on felony obstruction and four common misdemeanors.

He pleaded guilty to one low-level trespassing count in December 2022.

But Goodwyn’s real crime, according to Walton, was appearing on a cable show hosted by the most influential commentator on the Right a few months earlier. (In the DOJ’s sentencing memo asking for 90 days in prison and three years’ probation, assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Haag cited the March 2023 Carlson interview numerous times as justification for an excessive sentence on a minor offense: “Goodwyn’s interview on Tucker Carlson Tonight indicates that he does not take his actions, nor the impact of those actions, seriously.”)

Calling Carlson a “lightning rod” and someone who “has said and done things that I think clearly have been divisive,” Walton—who like many Carlson critics probably never watched the top-rated evening show at the time—declared his own war on political “disinformation.”

In addition to ordering Goodwyn to serve 60 days in prison—he had already served 12 days behind bars in pretrial detention and spent more than a year under house arrest—Walton instructed probation officers to scour Goodwyn’s computer for political wrongthink. “[Since] he has used social media in order to provide what I consider to be disinformation about this situation, I would require that he permit his computer use to be subject to monitoring and inspection by the probation department to see if he is, in fact, disseminating information of the nature that relates to the events that resulted in what occurred on January 6th of 2021,” Walton said during the June 2023 sentencing hearing.

Walton blamed “misinformation that is disseminated to the American public” for the “discord that now exists in our country in reference to the presidential election and what occurred on January 6th.”

And as is the case with every self-appointed commissar using his authority to silence dissent, Walton proceeded to spread his own amount of disinformation about January 6 and the treatment of Capitol protesters, i.e., supporters of Donald Trump. 

Walton claimed that “several police officers, because of the violent nature of what they experienced have committed suicide, [and] another officer who died as a result of the trauma he experienced,” referring to the death of Brian Sicknick, who tragically died of a stroke caused by blood clots near his brain on January 7, 202. (Carlson previously had aired surveillance video showing Sicknick walking around the Capitol seemingly uninjured after being hit with pepper spray that afternoon.) There is no evidence the officers who committed suicide even months after the protest did so as a result of the four-hour disturbance on January 6.

Walton also insisted “there is just no proof” that the presidential election was stolen and lamented the fact that “so many other of our fellow Americans has (sic) accepted the false impression” about voting fraud in 2020.

Walton then told the biggest whopper of all, one easily contradicted by a simple Google search of his own record on January 6 cases; he denied that J6ers were being “treated unfairly” by the justice system. “I see no evidence [of] that.”

Temper Tantrums from an Intemperate Judge

Walton needed to take a moment and look in the mirror.

According to recent DOJ data, Walton already has sent at least 22 J6 defendants, most of whom were convicted of misdemeanors or nonviolent obstruction, to federal prison—unheard in comparison to other recent protests in Washington including the 2017 inauguration riots, the 2018 demonstrations against the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, and the far more destructive 2020 George Floyd riots that prompted the lockdown of the White House.

At the same time Walton, like so many of his colleagues on the D.C. bench, routinely berates J6 defendants over their political views and associations. 

Just a few examples:

• In September 2021, Walton screamed at a Florida man who had pleaded guilty to the petty offense of “parading” in the Capitol. Walton, according to Politico, told Anthony Mariotto that he “disgraced this country in the eyes of the world” and that January 6 represented an “attack on our government.” Politico reporters Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein described Walton’s behavior as “an angry fusillade” common in his courtroom related to January 6 cases.

• Walton also shouted at a couple from Kentucky in court the following month. Tom and Lori Vinson pleaded guilty to the same low level “parading” offense but that didn’t stop Walton from raging at the couple for falling “hook, line and sinker” for what Walton insisted were lies about the 2020 election. He said he wanted the punishment “to hurt” so the Vinsons wouldn’t believe more “election lies” the next time around. (He sentenced them to five years’ probation so the government can keep tabs on the Vinsons through 2024.) “If you were gullible enough to buy into it before, why aren’t you gullible enough to buy into again?”

• Once again insisting that the country was being “torn apart” by “lies,” Walton took direct aim at Trump during an April 2022 hearing. “We have charlatans like our former president, who doesn't in my view really care about democracy, but only about power. And as a result of that, it's tearing this country apart."

• Walton referred to Trump as a “demagogue” during the March 2023 sentencing of a 21-year-old man accused of assaulting police with bear spray.  January 6, Walton opined, “is something that still haunts us because the individuals who instigated what occurred are still engaging in the same rhetoric that resulted in the frenzy that took place on that day.” He sentenced the young man to 40 months.

• When Al Gore lost the presidency in 2000, Walton said during a February 2024 hearing, Gore “was a man about it,” an obvious criticism suggesting that Trump was not. Walton further warned “there won’t be an acceptance of a defeat” if Trump does not win the 2024 election.

Perhaps Walton Needs a Gag Order

As first reported by Epoch Times, the federal court of appeals in Washington just clipped Walton’s wings. A three-judge panel—two Republicans and one Democrat—on March 26 vacated Walton’s computer spying order for Goodwyn:

Walton also is the subject of an ethics complaint for his highly inappropriate appearance on CNN just two days after the appellate court reversed him. Speaking with CNN host Kaitlin Collins on March 28, Walton opined about New York Judge Juan Merchan’s expansive gag order against the former president pending his April 15 trial in Manhattan for allegedly falsifying records related to so-called “hush money” payments before the 2016 election.

Walton egregiously and without evidence suggested Trump is responsible for an uptick in alleged threats against federal judges. Watch:

In a letter to the chief judge of the D.C. circuit court, Mike Davis, founder and president of the Article III project, asked the court to police itself. “Judge Walton’s highly inappropriate, pre-planned, highly prejudicial, political CNN interview will cause the federal judiciary to lose its legitimacy with a broad swath of the American people,” Davis wrote on April 2. “DC federal judges must get their house in order and take immediate corrective action against Judge Walton. This will send a clear message to other federal judges, especially DC judges, that they cannot take off their judicial robes and climb into the political ring.”

Unfortunately, any relief—and that is highly unlikely—will come too late for the nearly 1,400 J6 defendants who must endure the partisan, unhinged, and inaccurate tirades routinely unleashed by D.C. judges. As I’ve reported for more than three years, Walton is not the exception but the rule at the E. Barrett Prettyman federal courthouse in the nation’s capital.

By the way, here is the Carlson-Goodwyn interview that so enraged the judge: