Below The Beltway

Last month, Philip Thompson, an aide to Virginia Senator Jim Webb was arrested trying to bring a gun into the building where Webb’s Senate office is located. At the time, there was much speculation that the gun that Thompson was carrying was, in fact, Webb’s which Thompson had been given earlier that day before Webb left on a flight from Reagan National Airport.

Today, those charges were dropped and the reason is really quite puzzling:

Prosecutors today dismissed the gun charge filed last month against an aide to Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) who was caught bringing a loaded pistol into the Russell Senate Office Building.

U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor said in a statement late today that his office had concluded that the essential elements of the charge — carrying a pistol without a license — could not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

Filed in D.C. Superior Court, the dismissal brings to an apparent end an embarrassing episode for Webb, a gun rights advocate, and the aide, Phillip Thompson, a former marine who serves as Webb’s executive assistant.

(…)

Defense lawyer Richard Gardiner, who was representing Thompson, said he was told by the prosecutor on the case that a video recording of the incident had been reviewed and that statements had been taken from all of the officers present when the gun was discovered.

“There was apparently complete unanimity that Mr. Thompson was totally stunned and clearly did not know that the gun was in there,” Gardiner said.

So, the question becomes. Was Thompson just a really good actor who convinced police and prosecutors that he had absolutely no idea that he was carrying a gun into a Senate Office Building ? If that’s true, then he managed to do something almost no criminal in the history of criminal justice has ever been able to do…..provide the police with a convincing story of innocence when he was, in fact, guilty.

But if Thompson really didn’t know the gun was there, then who put it there and why ?

H/T: Black Velvet Bruce Li