By Matthew Reardon| We The People News
The January 16, 2026 “Reasons and Judgment of Conviction” should trouble anyone who still believes courts exist to restrain government power rather than protect it.
What follows is not a disagreement with a judge’s discretion. It is a point-by-point exposure of how law was contorted, evidence was excused away, and constitutional standards were quietly lowered to preserve a prosecution that should never have survived.
This ruling was not merely wrong. It was constructed.
1. The Court Excused Destroyed Evidence Instead of Punishing It
The most glaring defect appears immediately: the court accepted the government’s claim that critical video evidence was “not preserved due to technical error.”
That evidence was not peripheral. It went to the heart of the case. It showed U.S. Marshals waving me forward, directing my movement, and initiating the interaction later characterized as criminal.
This footage was requested. Timely. Repeatedly. On the record.
The law on this is settled. When the government loses or destroys materially exculpatory evidence—especially after notice—it does not receive deference. It receives sanctions. In many cases, dismissal.
Instead, the court did the opposite. It credited the government’s explanation without scrutiny and then proceeded as if the evidence never mattered.
That is not neutral adjudication. That is insulation.
2. The Court Erased Entrapment by Pretending It Wasn’t Raised
Entrapment is not a buzzword. It is a doctrine grounded in the idea that the government may not manufacture crimes by inducing conduct it then punishes.
The record shows federal officers initiating contact, signaling me forward, escalating the encounter, and only enforcing once criticism intensified.
The ruling does not meaningfully analyze this.
There is no serious inquiry into inducement.
No examination of officer conduct.
No assessment of whether the alleged violation would have occurred but for government prompting.
Instead, entrapment is treated as if it barely exists—mentioned only obliquely, then discarded.
That omission is not accidental. It is necessary for the conviction to stand.
3. The Court Rewrote “Obstruction” to Mean “Possibility”
The regulation at issue criminalizes unreasonable obstruction of entrances.
The court never identifies a single person who was blocked.
Never finds a delayed entry.
Never cites a disrupted operation.
Why? Because none occurred.
The door was locked.
Marked “emergency exit only.”
Not used by the public.
To overcome this, the court substitutes speculation for fact—what could have happened, what officers felt, what security imagined.
That is not proof beyond a reasonable doubt. It is conjecture elevated to conviction.
Courts do not convict people for what might have occurred. At least, they are not supposed to.
4. The Forum Analysis Is a Legal Shell Game
The ruling quietly downgrades the forum.
While acknowledging that courthouse steps are traditionally public, the court effectively treats the immediate exterior entrance area as something less—without citing a statute, regulation, or posted restriction converting it into a limited or nonpublic forum.
This maneuver matters. Once the forum is downgraded, constitutional scrutiny weakens. Government discretion expands.
But forum status is not decided by convenience. It is decided by history, access, and use.
The ruling offers none of that analysis—only assertion.
5. “Content Neutrality” Is Asserted, Not Proven
The court insists enforcement was content neutral.
The record says otherwise.
Recording was tolerated—until it documented Marshals.
Speech was tolerated—until it criticized Marshals.
Presence was tolerated—until the message became inconvenient.
Neutrality is not declared by judges. It is demonstrated by facts. And the facts here show escalation only after expressive activity crossed a line of criticism.
That is classic retaliatory enforcement.
6. The Court Pretended Speech and Conduct Are Separable
This ruling depends on a fiction: that speech and conduct can be surgically separated when enforcement is triggered by expression.
Protest is conduct.
Journalism is conduct.
Recording government officials is conduct.
The First Amendment protects these activities precisely because they occur in physical space and real time.
By pretending the case was about “conduct alone,” the court avoids confronting the constitutional problem it created. O and lets not forget about the many times throughout the order the judge made some type of reference to my language, even emphasized it. He can try to bend and twist it for some other reason, but that is a farce and this judgement bears weight to that. The Government got caught with its pants around its ankles. They got exposed and publicly criticized for it. This is what this retaliatory prosecution was all about.
7. The Missed Deadline Tells the Truth the Ruling Hides
The court ordered its own deadline: by or before January 15th.
It missed it.
Judges do not miss deadlines on easy cases. They miss them when facts conflict with outcomes.
The delay betrays hesitation.
The hesitation betrays doubt.
The doubt betrays the ruling.
This was not a clear conviction. It was a salvaged one.
8. Why This Conviction Was the Government’s Best Outcome—and Its Worst Mistake
An acquittal would have buried misconduct quietly.
A conviction creates a record.
This ruling now travels—to appellate judges not embedded in this courthouse, not invested in excusing Marshals, not tasked with justifying a prosecution built on missing evidence and speculative harm.
In trying to save the government, the court exposed it.
So yes, I will say this plainly.
Thank you, Judge Thomas Buckblanc.
Thank you for choosing a ruling that can be reviewed, reversed, and cited.
Because this case is no longer about me.
It is about whether the federal government can bait citizens, destroy evidence, criminalize journalism, and rely on judicial indulgence to make it all disappear.
That question is now on the record.
And it will be answered.
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