Maybe the trespassers thought they simply engaged in a peaceful protest? Some are claiming they were invited into the capital building. I think they'd be guilty of trespass whether they knew they were or not. They'd certainly have to pay for any damages caused by the trespass, whether intentional or not.
It was always virtually inevitable that they'd claim as much, but that in itself only holds as much weight as any other plea of not guilty. While it is true that most people who are not guilty will say as much, so too will most people who
are guilty say some variation of the same. When there is no reasonable defense that you were uninvolved with a criminal act, the next defense is typically to try and mitigate culpability, often by arguing that the defendant had a reasonable belief that their actions were somehow permissible. But claiming that they thought they were allowed amounts to very little unless they can demonstrate that
a reasonable third party would have shared that belief. And frankly, in this particular case, that argument runs into more than a few contradictions, such as the construction of a rudimentary gallows outside Capitol Hill coupled with the mob having a rallying cry about hanging the politicians ("Hang Mike Pence" getting the most press) they were marching on. Then there's the rioters that came with zip-ties and other tools indicating an intent to - at minimum - kidnap those same politicians they were literally breaking down doors to try and force their way to, and the ones that came with guns, machetes, crossbows, and Molotov cocktails. A reasonable third party would not look at that and assume that the group had peaceful intentions.
And then it comes to actual violent actions there's also the matter of them coming into direct conflict with, assaulting and overwhelming the police (138 of which were injured), the fact that Congress ended up being evacuated for its safety, and the fact that they
planted pipe bombs in several offices. And you want to spin that as nothing more severe than trespassing? Heck, in the immediate aftermath, even the likes of Mitch McConnell were quick to condemn it as a failed insurrection, and the FBI was equally quick to characterize it as an act of domestic terrorism. The immediate domestic response was bipartisan condemnation of what amounted to an inexcusable and undemocratic effort to overturn the election.
To put
extremely mildly, in light of everything that happened, to argue that they thought they were engaged in peaceful protest is one
hell of an uphill battle that doesn't really hold up to even perfunctory scrutiny. That defense pretty much went out the window by the time they put up the gallows and started chanting that the politicians they were marching on should be hung, at which point they were quite literally acting as a lynch mob and sacrificed any right to the assumption that they were speaking figuratively.
To veer to analogy for a moment, if I said you deserved to be shot and pointed a loaded gun at you, you'd have me dead to rights on assault with a deadly weapon, regardless of whether or not I ever pulled the trigger. I could (and inevitably would, as barring a good plea deal it's smarter than outright admitting to attempted murder) claim that I never intended to pull that trigger. But frankly, the simple fact that I'd make such a plea means very little. After all, that kind of talk is cheap and my actions conveyed quite the opposite. I couldn't just say that I was never serious and expect the jury to just buy it, ignoring all the evidence suggesting otherwise in favor of simply taking me at my word, and thereby excuse me of criminal wrongdoing. Hell, even if they did believe I had no intent of following through, it would not change the fact that I threatened you with a deadly weapon, which is still very much a criminal offense which could land me in prison for a good decade. Or to use a more historical example, when they caught Guy Fawkes standing with a slow match over 36 barrels of gunpowder, the Gunpowder Plotters did not get to plea that they had committed no actual crimes on the grounds that Parliament remained conspicuously unexploded, much less that said powder kegs should not constitute evidence of intent to blow it up.
So too is it here. They don't get to chant about hanging the politicians on the gallows they built and were breaking down doors to get to, and then turn around and claim they
totally weren't serious about it when they get taken to task for it. That's functionally little more than a variation of the Sideshow Bob Defense, using the failure of a criminal endeavor to argue that that same endeavor was never attempted. "Heads I win, Tails doesn't count as flipping the coin", so to speak.
And quite frankly, the argument of ignorance, of believing that the lynch mob they were marching with - one that constructed a gallows and literally kept shouting its intent to use it on the people they were marching on - did not have violent intent would already be an uphill battle, but - as touched on before - that's not where the story ends. It's strained before we even take into account the 138 police officers they injured, the weapons and kidnapping tools they brought, etc. Never mind that on top of all that, we're talking about a case wherein a large group of people stormed the Capitol and used force with the explicit aim of trying to prevent Congress from certifying the election results, practically a slam dunk for charges of Seditious Conspiracy. We've similarly got them dead to rights on entering the floors of Congress with force/violence (40 USC 5104(e)) with intent to disrupt the orderly conduct of official business, assault on federal officers (18 USC 1114), and possession of firearms and dangerous weapons on federal facilities (18 USC 930), to name but a few examples.
More importantly, however, I think you need to take a step back and consider how/why you're coming to suggest this. This was literally a case where you found out that your initial position was ill-researched and responded to that by suggesting "well, maybe instead...", immediately pivoting to the next closest position to your initial preconception. "Oh, so we can't dismiss the charges out of hand because I misunderstood legal impossibility? Well then,
maybe the blame that we can't dismiss out of hand is really not on the accused but instead the political party we share mutual enmity with!"
But let's go a bit more in-depth on that. Your argument here wasn't based in observed data, it was pure spitballing in hopes of finding some explanation -
any explanation - that would exculpate the rioters seemingly out of pure tribalism; that because the rioters were 'on the right', any 'correct' answer
must be one that somehow results in them being the good guys and the 'left' the bad guys. We see this in everything from how you've been religiously downplaying the storming of the Capitol as simple trespassing, to the "what ifs" you're spinning seemingly without having done any research into the facts of the case, and your subsequent attempts to paint this as either entrapment or some shade of false-flag operation based around the...let's be generous and call it a questionable assertion that Democrats somehow made security deliberately lax, and that therefore Trump's base - who, even under this premise, would have no knowledge of that - storming the Capitol must have somehow been a deliberate ploy by the Democrats and thus the latter rather than the former must be culpable for the storming of the Capitol.
You went from "it wasn't a big deal" to "well shouldn't the major crime they tried to commit be considered impossible and therefore the defendants blameless", and then to "well, the Democrats must have tricked them into doing it!", and then went back to "they couldn't have committed a crime!" That pattern is a
big red flag indicating that you aren't drawing conclusions from the data, but are instead throwing shit at the wall hoping that something will stick that matches your preconceptions about the inherent morality of 'your team' and the 'other team'.
Please gorf, stop letting partisan editorials tell you what to think and start doing some independent research.