Gorbey resumes cross-examining witnesses despite judge’s warning

Michael Gorbey returned to questioning witnesses in his trial Tuesday after a day of questioning by his standby counsel.

Gorbey had questioned all witnesses until Monday, when standby counsel Eugene Ohm took a turn.

{mosads}Presiding Judge Gregory Jackson has warned Gorbey numerous times over the past two weeks that his questions are inappropriate and advised him to let Ohm take the lead in witness inquisitions.

Ohm declined to speak about any strategy that he and Gorbey have agreed to regarding witness questioning.

“I definitely can’t answer that,” Ohm said.

In Tuesday’s testimony, a U.S. Capitol Police crime scene technician testified about the alleged explosive device found in the truck police say Gorbey drove to Capitol Hill.

Officer Jonathan Klipa said he was surprised to find the device — a glass container taped to a metal canister and filled with lead spheres and gunpowder. Klipa made his discovery on Feb. 8 because the Capitol Police bomb squad did not discover the alleged explosive device during its initial sweep of the vehicle on Jan. 18, when Gorbey, 38, was arrested.

“I realized I was staring at what was probably a can of black powder and I assumed it was a homemade bomb,” Klipa said.

Gorbey questioned Klipa Tuesday on details surrounding his evidence-gathering process, including what Gorbey said were inconsistencies in times and names of officers on official documents filed by Klipa.

Klipa said they were not inconsistencies but rather standard procedures for filing the documents.

“If you read my notes, it explains all that,” Klipa said.

Klipa did contradict himself when Gorbey questioned him on two photographs Klipa said he took. Asked by Gorbey if he took them at the same time, he said it was impossible to take two pictures at the same time and that he took them one right after the other.

Gorbey inquired as to why a red-and-black hat in the pictures appeared to be in different positions in the two photos. Klipa said that he did not know and that the two pictures could have been taken at different moments.

“It could have been the same time,” Klipa said. “It could have been different days. I don’t know.”

Klipa said he found a green day-planner in Gorbey’s truck but that he did not consider it evidentiary. Gorbey moved to enter copied pages from it as evidence, at which time the government successfully objected.

Gorbey said in an interview with The Hill that he was carrying documents and physical evidence of a government conspiracy the day he was arrested and that the government is attempting to cover it up by not allowing him to introduce it in court.

Presiding Judge Jackson, as he has done in the past, criticized Gorbey for attempting to introduce evidence that does not pertain to his current case. Gorbey has argued that in order to prove his innocence, he must show that the government is conspiring against him and has done so before.

The U.S. government is prosecuting Gorbey on 14 charges, including manufacturing explosives and possessing a weapon of mass destruction. The latter two charges each could yield a maximum prison term of 30 years.

FBI Agent Daniel Hickey testified Monday that the alleged explosive device could have potentially killed someone close by but that it did not have a fusing system to initiate an explosion.

Government prosecutors argue that a small hole on the bottom of the device’s metal container could have been used to place a firecracker or some other kind of detonating system.

Under cross-examination by standby counsel Ohm, Hickey could not say whether the hole had been caused by the bomb squad when he rendered the device safe with a water cannon, or had been present previously.