Capitol riot defendant requests trial be moved to home state of Texas

In court documents filed Wednesday, the defense attorney for one of the women arrested for storming the US Capitol Jan. 6 has requested her client's trial be moved to her home state of Texas to avoid a biased jury pool in Washington, DC.

Jenny Louise Cudd, 36, is a Texas-based florist charged in DC federal court with five counts related to the riots that took place on Capitol Hill earlier this year.

In documents, Cudd's lawyer, Marina Medvin, stated she wanted "a change of venue pursuant to her right to trial by an impartial jury under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments, and pursuant to her right to a fair and impartial trial under Rule 21(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure." This is the only defendant out of hundreds who has requested a change of venue.

When the Washington Post reported this story initially, the site said Medvin "asked a federal judge Wednesday to move her case from Washington to near her home in western Texas, saying a more Republican-friendly jury would decide her guilt or innocence more fairly."

While this could be perhaps one way of grossly summarizing Medvin's motion, she did attempt to make the case that "detrimental pretrial publicity and community prejudice in Washington D.C. is so likely to have affected the jury pool that the venire must be presumed as tainted."

"The facts of this case center around Donald Trump and his supporters. The facts of this case include political statements that are favorable to Donald Trump and adverse to Democrat political interests. The evidence in this case is emotionally political in every respect. But the jury who would hear the facts in Washington, DC is the most politically prejudiced jury in the entire country," the motion stated.

Cudd has never denied entering the Capitol or participating in the riots. In fact, the motion states, "According to an agent's review of the security footage from the Capitol, Ms. Cudd can be seen walking through the Capitol building's Upper West Terrace Doors at 2:35 p.m., taking some selfie pictures, walking around the ground floor, and walking out. She did not break anything; she did not hurt anyone; she did not take anything."

A BuzzFeed article reports that Capitol insurrectionists may start getting "plea deals." The breadth and scope of the aftermath of the riots has been impressive in terms of law enforcement. "[L]aw enforcement officers had executed more than 900 search warrants nationwide and collected more than 15,000 hours of surveillance and police body camera footage, approximately 1,600 electronic devices, and more than 210,000 tips from the public. Investigators had also produced more than 80,000 reports with 93,000 attachments based on witness interviews and other steps they'd taken as part of the investigation."