St. Louis, MO (KFTK) -- Al Watkins, the St. Louis attorney who has been at the center of many high-profile cases, is taking heat for comments he made about the people who were involved in the riot at the Capitol in January.
Watkins was being interviewed by Matt Shuham, a reporter for Talking Points Memo, when he apparently went on an expletive-laced tirade against the Capitol rioters.
Watkins joins St. Louis Talks on KMOX to discuss controversial comments:
According to Shuham, Watkins said the infamous Q Shaman, Jacob Chansley, whom he represents, has Asperger's syndrome and that his mental state would play a big role in his case.
"A lot of these defendants - and I'm going to use this colloquial term, perhaps disrespectfully - but they're all f*****g short-bus people." Watkins apparently said. "These are people with brain damage, they're f*****g retarded, they're on the god***n spectrum."
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Watkins then seemingly goes on to defend the people he verbally degraded, saying, "But they're our brothers, our sisters, our neighbors, our coworkers - they're part of our country. These aren't bad people, they don't have prior criminal history."
Finally, Watkins defends his client, Chansley and the people he degraded by trying to pin their actions on what he calls Hitler-like "propaganda."
"F**k," Watkins says, "they were subjected to four-plus years of god***n propaganda the likes of which the world has not seen since f*****g Hitler."
The comments by Watkins have been trending on Twitter and many are calling out the lawyer's comments.
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