‘HORRIFIED’

Oath Keeper Jurors Cried Watching Lawyer ‘Torture’ His Client on the Stand, One Says

The jury balked at what they saw as a “stunt” by William Isaac’s own legal team “to get him to fall apart” on the stand, a member said.

The jury in the trial of a half-dozen Oath Keepers charged over their roles on Jan. 6, 2021 were “horrified” to watch one attorney attempt to pressure his client into breaking down on the stand in an apparent legal “stunt,” a member said in a recent interview. The juror, identified only as Ellen, told C-SPAN’s Brian Lamb that several jurors cried in the courtroom as they watched William Isaacs, who has autism, be interrogated by his own legal team. “His defense attorney tried to get him to fall apart by yelling at him and not letting him wear his headset,” Ellen recalled. “He was torturing his client to get us to feel sympathy.” Isaac’s attorney, Charles Green, confirmed to Politico that the grilling had been a deliberate ploy. “The strategy was: The jury’s going to hate me, but usually when you kick a puppy, the jury hates the person who kicks the puppy but they have sympathy for the puppy,” he said. The strategy didn’t work; Isaacs was convicted on all charges alongside three other defendants. (Two others were acquitted of conspiracy, but convicted on lesser charges.)