CBS News Capitol correspondent Scott MacFarlane reports an unnamed Capitol riot defendant has hired a pollster to conduct a public opinion survey of DC residents in support of a motion to request a change of venue. MacFarlane did not elaborate further, but safe to say this is pretty fucking hilarious that this person spent at minimum a few thousand dollars – and probably much more if they used a halfway decent pollster – to commission a public opinion poll to use to convince a judge that the potential jury pool in DC is tainted and the trial must be held in another jurisdiction.

Another chart shows the survey’s respondents (with no indication of sample size) answers to “Do you believe that any individual who was inside the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 should be convicted of insurrection?” to which 73% said yes, 15% no, and 13% said not sure.

Now, we’re not experts on jury selection or public opinion surveys but we’re going to just use basic math here: If this number is accurate then that means there’s a better than one-in-ten shot any individual juror candidate would be “not sure” and thus impartial enough for a fair trial. We seriously doubt that’s lower than the threshold for a change of venue in a federal criminal trial, whatever it might be or if there even is one versus some subjective determination made by a judge.

So there’s a good chance this person’s own polling ends up being good evidence for the judge to deny the request rather than grant it. Points for style though. This defendant certainly put more thought into this than the asshole who argued “The D.C. venue is polluted by the city’s political culture of ‘canceling’ those associated with allegations of ‘white supremacy’. A guilty verdict by a D.C. jury could be readily based on pretrial media affiliation of Ms. Cudd with ‘white supremacy.'”