WASHINGTON — A U.S. Army Special Forces veteran whose Jan. 6 trial has been delayed repeatedly for nearly two years won yet another delay Wednesday as a federal judge agreed to allow him to switch lawyers for the sixth time.
Jeffrey McKellop, a three-time Bronze Star recipient and former military contractor from Fishersville, Virginia, has been held in pretrial detention since his arrest in March 2021. He faces 16 felony counts, including 11 counts of assaulting police, for his alleged role in the Capitol riot. Among other allegations, prosecutors say McKellop beat an officer with a flagpole before throwing it at him like a spear – striking the officer in the face.
McKellop was originally scheduled for a jury trial in May 2022. Because of delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, that date would have placed him among the first group of Capitol riot defendants to go before a jury. However, his trial dates have repeatedly been vacated as he has switched from one set of attorneys to the next. He was most recently scheduled to begin trial on May 13, but that date, too, did not hold.
Late last month, McKellop’s most recent attorneys, Michael Lawlor and Adam Demetriou, filed a motion to withdraw as counsel. They entered the case in November to replace McKellop’s former lawyers William Shipley and Phillip Linder. In their motion, Lawlor and Demetrious said McKellop had instructed them to withdraw from the case because of an unspecified conflict of interest.
In court Wednesday, McKellop, who appeared telephonically from a Bureau of Prisons facility in Texas, was similarly cryptic.
“There’s reasons why I do what I do, but there’s people on this line who don’t have the clearance for that,” McKellop said.
Federal prosecutors strongly opposed McKellop’s request for new counsel, saying he has a “pattern and practice” of having a falling out with his attorneys roughly a month out from trial. Assistant U.S. Attorney Ashley Akers said granting him yet another trial continuance would cause “incredible prejudice” to the public and to McKellop’s alleged victims.
“Victims of the alleged assault have had to continuously relive this since May 2022, when this case was originally set for trial, “ Akers said.
In total, McKellop has been represented by 10 different attorneys as part of five different defense teams. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols said he would grant McKellop’s request for new counsel over the objection of the government. Nichols warned he was unlikely to grant any further requests to assign new counsel, however.
“There gets to a point where a defendant doesn’t get to just keep cycling through appointed counsel,” Nichols said.
Nichols made his decision to give McKellop “another shot,” as he put it, following an ex parte hearing in which only he, McKellop and his current attorney, Lawlor, were on the line. Although the nature of the discussion wasn’t revealed on the public record, Nichols gave McKellop the opportunity to share anything he wanted afterward.
“I am a Christian and I will tell the truth by whatever means available,” McKellop said. “If no one else will do it then by my own hands.”
“Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Nichols said.
Nichols said he would endeavor to find McKellop new counsel at “light speed” – hopefully based in Texas where McKellop was transferred for a competency evaluation sought by previous attorneys. Askers said Wednesday that McKellop had passed that evaluation and should be transferred back to D.C. to await trial.
In the 39 months since the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, more than 150 people have been convicted at contested trials and another 37 have been convicted in stipulated trials. More than 850 defendants who have been convicted or pleaded guilty have been sentenced.