Last week, the American Society of Criminology (ASC) held its 80th Annual Meetings in Washington, D.C. The theme was Criminology, Law, and the Democratic Ideal.

On day two, I found myself in an impromptu debate with Roger Roots. The name may not be familiar but perhaps it should be. As a January 6 defense lawyer, Roots was what Politico called the “Hidden hand” in the Oath Keepers militia leader Stewart Rhodes’ bid to derail his trial, and lead defense counsel for Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola, alleging government wrongdoing and calling for a mistrial, using as evidence Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s airing of J6 security footage.

In the realm of constitutional law, Roots has written papers including The Originalist Case for the Fourth Amendment. But there is more to him than a mere legal résumé.

He has had a couple of felony convictions. In one he was sentenced to 51 weeks in jail for resisting arrest and violating probation in Florida. In the other, he was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison for possession of unregistered firearms, including some found in his room at a community college in Wyoming.

Roots has run for office. In 2014, while an assistant professor of criminology and sociology at Jarvis Christian College in Hawkins, Texas, he took leave to campaign in his home state, Montana, as a Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate.

At the time, he told the Sidney Herald his status as a “former” racist and Holocaust denier had cost him a teaching position at Macon State College ten years before. He also told the Herald, “I used to be an extreme right winger, and I used to read the writings of Adolf Hitler and all kinds of racist materials.” He failed to mention past allegations about connections to the Ku Klux Klan.

Roots’ legal work on the far right ranges wider than J6. In 2016, he was a “volunteer paralegal” for Ryan Bundy, “one of 26 defendants indicted on a federal conspiracy charge stemming from the armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.” The judge allowed Roots to confer confidentially with Bundy in jail and sit beside him during hearings, but not to address the court.

At the ASC last week, the conference program listed a presentation by Roger Roots of Lysander Spooner University — which appears to just be a website. I thought it worth going along to listen.

The session was entitled, Did Trump's Pardon of the J6ers “End a Grave National Injustice?” A J6 Defense Lawyer Speaks.

The abstract said: “Trump's mass pardon of ‘J6ers’ was met by condemnation … throughout news media, academia, and the legal system. Many voices denounced the pardons as an attempt by Trump to whitewash or falsify the narrative of January 6. But was there something to Trump's assessment that the J6 prosecutions were a grave national injustice?

“In this paper, a J6 defense lawyer who tried 14 J6 cases and argued four J6 appeals before the DC Circuit addresses all sides of this issue. The author concludes that January 6 prosecutions were indeed a grave injustice that merited Trump's clemency.

“The cases produced inordinately high conviction rates, and produced the harshest average sentences ever associated with political rioting in American history. Federal prosecutors relied on novel theories of the law and utilized federal statutes in ways never before seen. The author will answer questions and criticisms.”

In front of a healthy crowd, Roots began by referencing Trump’s executive order pardoning some 1,500 convicted J6-ers on day one of his second term. He told us the president had not provided Americans with any reasons for his pardons and clemencies.

“Trump should have allowed me to write the executive order for him,” Roots said.

The presentation that followed was based on a combination of facts, fictions, and distorted legal arguments about J6 prosecutions in relation to historical non-prosecutions of peaceful demonstrators. Without offering any real details, Roots’ examples included:

  • Socialist leader Eugene Debs’ arrest in 1918 and sentencing in 1919 for his anti-war rhetoric.
  • The 1932 Bonus Army Incident, in which around 20,000 World War I veterans occupying vacant federal buildings in DC to demand payment of promised bonuses were removed.
  • The internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
  • The events of May 2, 1967, when some two-dozen armed members of the Black Panthers Party for Self-Defense, led by Bobby Seale, entered the California State Capitol in Sacramento to protest the pending Mulford Act, a gun control law.

Roots’ contention was that the legal treatment of violent J6ers was more harmful, severe and unprecedented than anything that occurred with respect to his four examples. He was also trying to make the case that both the J6ers and Trump were victims of “selective and vindictive" prosecution.

His arguments were easily shot down.

Chiefly, he had omitted from his presentation the fact that none of his examples were about protestor-police interactions, let alone instances of violence. In the case of the Bonus Army, 10 days of peaceful occupation preceded forced removal by the armed forces.

Five minutes or so into Roots’ presentation, I decided somebody had to check this gaslighting troll.

I decided to throw him off his game. As the saying goes, “I’m not a lawyer but I have played one on TV.” I have also played one on radio, on podcasts and on YouTube. I decided that since Roots was essentially acting as a defense attorney, I would play prosecutor and judge. I did so by interrupting whenever I felt his ad hominem assault on due process and the rule of law needed to be disrupted.

Much of Roots’ presentation was about the supposed “injustices” of criminal prosecutions in the U.S., in this case of J6 insurrectionists who tried to overturn an election. Whenever I wanted to intervene, I simply said: “Counselor, there is nothing unusual here, that is simply the way our criminal justice system works.” By the end of his presentation, Roots had agreed with me on virtually every objection — which rather undermined his conclusions.

When he finished and asked for questions and comments, I waited until everyone who wished to speak had done so. Then, as Roots was preparing to leave, I popped back in: “Not so fast, counselor.” It was time to address Trump’s own selective and vindictive prosecutions.

“Tell me,” I said. “Yes or no, are the prosecutions of [ex-FBI Director] Jim Comey and [New York Attorney General] Letitia James selective and vindictive?"

To which, Roots said: “Yes, I guess they are. We just don’t have a very fair system of law in this country.”

I had one final question.

“Would you not agree that as bad as our ‘rigged’ system of justice might be, it is far worse today under the direction of Donald Trump and the anti-constitutional MAGA justices of the Supreme Court than it has ever been?”

Our conversation was done.

  • Gregg Barak is an emeritus professor of criminology and criminal justice at Eastern Michigan University and the author of several books on the crimes of the powerful, including Criminology on Trump (2022) and its sequel, Indicting the 45th President (2024). The third book in this Trump trilogy, Regime Change, Authoritarian Treason, and the Outlaw-in-Chief: President Donald Trump’s Struggle to Kill U.S. Democracy & Realign American Global Power, will be published after the 2026 midterm elections.