Photo provided Donald Moss, Elizabethtown, and James Link Behymer, shown circled in this photos, are shown entering the U.S. Capitol building.
Photo provided Donald Moss, Elizabethtown, and James Link Behymer, shown circled in this photos, are shown entering the U.S. Capitol building.
A federal judge on Thursday scheduled an initial hearing for two Bartholomew County men arrested last week charged with assaulting law enforcement officers and storming the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.
Magistrate Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya ordered Donald Lee Moss, 62, of Elizabethtown and James Link Behymer, 61, of Hope to appear via videoconference in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday at 12:30 p.m., according to federal court records.
The two men were arrested last week on felony and misdemeanor charges, including assaulting law enforcement while a violent mob loyal to former President Donald Trump forced its way inside the U.S. Capitol in a failed attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Trump, for his part, is currently facing felony charges for working to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the run-up to the violent riot by his supporters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Upadhyaya also presided over Trump’s arraignment in the case.
Moss and Behymer appeared in U.S. District Court in Indianapolis last week and were placed on pre-trial release by a magistrate judge. However, a spokesperson with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Indiana told The Republic that U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., has jurisdiction over the matter “because the alleged crime was committee in D.C., so all their hearings will take place in that court.”
The U.S. Attorney’s office for the District of Columbia and the Department of Justice Nation Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section are prosecuting the case.
Under the terms of the release, the two men cannot leave the Southern District of Indiana unless authorized by federal authorities and are barred from possessing firearms and consuming alcohol, among other conditions.
Moss and Behymer are currently facing six criminal charges including assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers; civil disorder; entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds; disorderly or disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly conduct in a Capitol building or grounds; and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building or grounds, according to the criminal complaint.
The complaint alleges that Moss and Behymer were part of a group of “angry and violent rioters” who descended upon and assaulted D.C. Metropolitan police officers near the lower west terrace of the U.S. Capitol who were attempting to keep them from breaching the building on Jan. 6, 2021.
Federal authorities said in the complaint they were able to identify the two Bartholomew County men through cellphone records — including a cellphone number with an 812 area code that connected to a cell site that provided service inside the U.S. Capitol during the insurrection — as well as a witness described as “longtime associate of Moss and Behymer” who identified the two defendants after being shown still images.
Currently, it is unclear if the two defendants plan to hire an attorney. Court records state that they are being represented by Dominic David Martin of Indiana Federal Community Defenders, which seeks to provide legal representation to indigent defendants.
The arrest of Moss and Behymer this week raises the total number of current and former Bartholomew County residents who have faced criminal charges over their alleged roles in the deadly insurrection to three.
In April 2021, former Columbus resident and heavy metal musician Jon Schaffer pleaded guilty to storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Schaffer is currently scheduled to be sentenced on April 5, though a U.S. Supreme Court decision on the scope of an obstruction charge used to prosecute him and hundreds of other Jan. 6 defendants could impact the sentence he receives.
