Video shows Fellows, who was photographed wearing a fake orange beard during the riot, with his feet propped on a table in the office of Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore. Fellows was locked up this summer for missing a mental health evaluation appointment and harassing a probation officer.
Fellows took the stand to argue for his release, brushing aside warnings from the judge that he could open himself to perjury charges if he testified.
In doing so, Fellows may have compounded his legal troubles.
Fellows told McFadden that he used what he described as a “loophole” he had read about online to disqualify a different judge overseeing an unrelated case in New York. Fellows said he listed a phone number for that judge’s wife as his own number in court records to make it appear that he knows the woman.
Fellows said he also asked the public defender who represented him before he rebuffed counsel in the riot case if he should try to get McFadden replaced by contacting the judge’s family, but the lawyer warned him that would get him arrested.
In denying Fellows’ bid for release, McFadden told Fellows that he admitted to likely obstructing justice in the New York case and considering it in his riot case.
McFadden, who was nominated by President Donald Trump, also jailed self-represented defendant Pauline Bauer last month for failing to comply with court orders to cooperate with probation officers during her pretrial release.
Bauer was arrested in May along with a friend who joined her at the Capitol. Video from a police officer’s body camera captured Bauer saying to bring out House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to be hanged, the FBI says.
Bauer, who owns a restaurant in rural Kane, Pennsylvania, has repeatedly interrupted the judge during hearings. She also has argued in vain that the court doesn’t have any jurisdiction over her, expressing an ideology that appears to comport with the “sovereign citizens” extremist movement.
During a July 19 hearing, Bauer told McFadden that she doesn’t want “any lawyering from the bench.” When the judge denied her request to dismiss her charges, she asked, “On what terms?”
“You don’t get to demand terms from me,” replied McFadden. McFadden appointed lawyers to serve as standby counsel for Fellows and Bauer and assist at the defendants’ request.