A U.S. Army reservist who worked on a Navy base stormed the U.S. Capitol because he wanted to kick off a civil war and create “a clean slate,” a federal prosecutor said Tuesday at the start of the New Jersey man's trial.
But a lawyer for Timothy Hale-Cusanelli told jurors that “groupthink” and a desperate desire “to be heard” drove him to follow a mob into the Capitol. Hale-Cusanelli shouldn't have entered the building on Jan. 6, 2021, defense attorney Jonathan Crisp acknowledged during the trial's opening statements.
