A lawyer for one of the two Virginia men charged with gun violations outside the Philadelphia vote count last week on Monday said his client had traveled to at least 10 states on behalf of Vets for Trump and had “an honest belief” his Virginia gun permit was recognized in Pennsylvania.
There was “never any incident of violence or a threat with violence,” the lawyer, A. Charles Peruto Jr., said of his client, Joshua Macias, 42, of Virginia Beach.
Court documents obtained by The Inquirer indicate that after being approached Thursday night, Macias initially told city police he was a Philadelphia resident. The documents also shed new light on how Macias and Antonio LaMotta, 61, traveled to Philadelphia in a silver Hummer, with handguns, 160 rounds of ammo, and an AR-style rifle, to “straighten things out” at the Convention Center where presidential ballots were being counted.
LaMotta’s Hummer displayed insignia of QAnon, a conspiracy movement the FBI described last year as a growing domestic terror threat.