“Ok sir, here’s the deal. Your client pleads guilty to Treason and Sedition, and we’ll drop the charges for stealing the lectern.”
He’ll go for it.
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Or you could say, “My client has been framed. That picture obviously shows Chip Gaines stealing the lectern and/or podium.”
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Holding a press conference allows you to bill your client so much money! Also, it allows your client to effectively audition for a job on Fox News when this is all over. Win-Win!
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A podium is a thing you stand on, from the Greek podi for foot, think podiatrist. A lectern is a thing you read from, from the Latin lectus from legere, to read. You stand on a podium to read from a lectern, like an orchestra conductor.
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Maybe they only took one semester of Greek and thought it was a place to speak and put one’s foot in one’s mouth.
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Yes, he does sound like a quack.
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No defending these idiots, but if the lectern never left the building, was it really stolen?
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Do you want to take a lecturn and try that as your defence in court?
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In high school I knew kids that shoplifted from the expensive trendy stores. They insisted they would never get busted because before they exited the store door they would quickly spin around and if anyone was behind them or approaching quickly they wouldn’t go through the door - and the little lawyers insisted they couldn’t be busted without leaving first with the item. That may or may not work in such a situation.
But in the lectern situation I’m guessing it would be considered theft (at a minimum) when it was removed from the area it was in that was not freely accessible to the public. Which is still more generous than say, removing a famous painting from a museum wall. but of course IANAL. 
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Yes. Taking the lecturn is equivalent to taking cash from the tills. Turning around at the door will not save you after that.
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Plot twist: he is a magician!
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Unless things have changed in the mumble decades since I learned my criminal law a requirement for theft (in the UK at least) is the intent to permanently deprive the true owner of the item.
Assuming the law applicable to DC is similar, if all he wanted to do was move the lectern somewhere else in the building as a prank, he might have a defence to a theft charge.
Equally of course if he took it intending to permanently deprive, then changed his mind later and dumped it before it left the building (or even the room it was in), still theft.
That’s the problem with @Garymon’s shoplifting acquaintances’ ploy. When they took the goods, they already had the necessary intent. Whether they later changed their minds doesn’t matter.
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Well…kin yer juggle?
Totally relevant song:
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Is he organic?. He could be fed to the “shaman”.
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For all we know the lectern was stolen by some guy sitting in his parents’ basement in New Jersey.
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Billable hours here are going to VASTLY exceed any resources that the client has to pay. The hope is that you can use a money-loser as a loss leader to get more business in the door. I’m sure that Johnnie Cochrane never got paid for all the billable hours he accrued in the OJ Simpson case. But getting Simpson a not guilty verdict has gotten his firm a shit-ton of business from clients that CAN pay. Most of whom his firm will plead out just like any other lawyer would have. But for that to work, of course, you actually have to look competent.
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Isn’t his wife a physician? Seems like there should be at least some financial resources available to him. I wonder what she thinks of his seditious escapade?
The thing I have found interesting about this whole mess is the number of people who actually DO have something to lose who decided to throw it away for, of all people, Trump.
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The little shits are kinda right, but they will get caught. The store manager calls mall security who meet you in the thoroughfare. They do need you to leave the store, but they don’t follow you out. At least not in the retail situations I’ve seen. Also there are cameras everywhere. They don’t need to catch you in the act of carrying a thing out of the store.
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