Posted on 02/04/2023 5:30:50 AM PST by MtnClimber
As judges hand down one absurd sentence after another, one might be inclined to laugh at the absurdity of it all except, of course, it’s not funny.
The Department of Justice carefully crafted the dramatic moment in court.
A federal prosecutor handed an enclosed paper bag to an FBI agent responsible for investigating members of the Proud Boys, now on trial for seditious conspiracy related to their participation in the events of January 6. The bag contained “evidence of the unlawful entry of the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 and evidence of the disruption to the certification of the 2020 presidential election,” FBI Special Agent Elizabeth D’Angelo told assistant U.S. Attorney Nadia Moore on Wednesday.
D’Angelo cautiously pulled the evidence out of the bag to present to the jury.
Spectators in D.C. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly’s courtroom were on the edge of their seats. What would the mystery bag reveal?
Would it disclose the group’s intricate but failed plot to overthrow the government? A detailed list of weapons the “seditionists” planned to use in service of their dastardly deed? Names of targeted officials?
A nervous hush fell over the room; sweat beads formed on furrowed brows. Finally, the big moment arrived.
It was—a set of challenge coins.
Moore: Can you give a brief description of what they are?
D’Angelo: They are challenge coins. This one is black and gold—and this package contains four black and gold colored challenge coins.
Moore: Are these the same coins that were seized from Zachary Rehl’s home?
D’Angelo: Yes.
What?
Like many organizations, the Proud Boys produce coins that depict the group’s motto and attitude. When multiple armed FBI agents raided Rehl’s Philadelphia residence in March 2021, terrorizing his pregnant wife and pillaging his home, investigators found not one but several such coins.
Prosecutors, however, didn’t explain how Rehl and his co-defendants—also found in possession of incriminating challenge coins during similar SWAT raids—deployed the dangerous faux currency that day. (One version included an image of a Pokemon character, apparently an insurrectionist himself.)
Did the Proud Boys hurl the trinkets at officers clad in full riot gear outside the Capitol? Did they open locked doors with the coins? Did they use the coins to bribe “election deniers” in Congress?
After all, no weapons were recovered at Rehl’s house. So what gives?
No one knows. Judge Kelly, a Trump appointee, last month insisted the coins were admissible evidence to show a “relationship” among the defendants.
Welcome to the judicial funhouse formally known as the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse—a maze of distortions created by government clowns and ghouls intended to frighten those trapped within its confines while amusing others behind the scenes. Wednesday’s embarrassing spectacle is only a tiny glimpse into the charade unfolding on a daily basis in the heart of the nation’s capital.
Consider just a few recent events. Last week, relatives of the late Brian Sicknick were allowed to read “victim impact” statements in the sentencing of Julian Khater, the man accused of spraying Sicknick with pepper spray on January 6. Although Sicknick did not die as a result of the spray—the coroner concluded he died of two strokes caused by a blood clot—Sicknick’s immediate family members continue to blame Khater for Sicknick’s passing, disproven claims nonetheless given the court’s imprimatur.
Sicknick’s former girlfriend was allowed to participate in the stunt, even though she admitted the couple was on a “break” months before the Capitol protest. Dozens of Capitol Police officers also attended the hearing. The theatrics worked. Judge Thomas Hogan ordered Khater to serve 80 months in prison.
A D.C. jury on January 23 returned all guilty verdicts in the trial of Richard Barnett, the man photographed with his feet on a desk in Nancy Pelosi’s office that afternoon. It took jurors less than two hours to convict Barnett on eight counts including obstruction and civil disorder. He faces decades in prison.
The same day, four men were found guilty of seditious conspiracy and other serious crimes tied to January 6. Alleged members of the Oath Keepers entered the Capitol an hour after Congress had evacuated the building, carried no weapons, stayed for less than 15 minutes, and vandalized nothing inside—a humiliating failure to overthrow democracy.
Nonetheless, Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia handling every criminal case, bragged about his office’s victory.
“For the second time in recent months, a jury has found that a group of Americans entered into a seditious conspiracy against the United States,” Graves boasted. “The goal of this conspiracy was to prevent the execution of our laws that govern the peaceful transfer of power—striking at the very heart of our democracy. We are grateful to the thoughtful, deliberative work of this jury who gave weeks of their lives to carefully consider and deliver justice in this case and in so doing reaffirmed our democratic principles.”
(A week later, Graves charged a California doctor who attempted to save Ashli Babbitt’s life with four misdemeanors including “parading” in the Capitol.)
The jury over which Graves swooned deliberated less than two days in a case comparable to treason.
“You’re entitled to your political views but not to an insurrection. You were an insurrectionist.” So said Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly during the February 1 sentencing hearing for Daniel Caldwell, a Marine veteran who pleaded guilty to spraying police officers on January 6. Caldwell spent 19 months in pretrial detention before accepting the government’s plea offer last September. Through tears, according to Politico’s Kyle Cheney, Caldwell begged Kollar-Kotelly, a Clinton appointee, for mercy.
She gave none.
Explaining how her harsh sentence must “fortify against the revolutionary fervor that you and others felt on January 6 and may still feel today,” Kollar-Kotelly sentenced Caldwell to 68 months in jail.
“Insurrection is not and cannot ever be warranted,” she lectured a man neither charged with nor convicted of insurrection.
But perhaps no one better represents the warped imagination of the prosecutors and judges overseeing January 6 cases better than Tanya Chutkan. The Obama appointee is known for handing down the stiffest punishment against Trump supporters, ordering nonviolent protesters accused of low level offenses to serve time in jail even when the government recommends none. And she’s on a roll.
Clearly agitated that Russell Alford, an Alabama man charged with the four most common misdemeanors in January 6 cases, chose to go to trial instead of accept the government’s plea offer, Chutkan scolded Alford for his 11-minute peaceful jaunt through the Capitol. “You may have not been breaking any glass, but make no mistake, that wouldn’t have been a mob without you,” Chutkan told Alford, convicted on all four counts last October after the jury spent only a few hours considering his fate. “You helped terrorize the real Patriots trying to fulfill their duty.”
Insisting she was not penalizing Alford for exercising his constitutional right to demand a jury trial—the first jury trial in Chutkan’s courtroom since every other January 6 defendant, clearly aware of her reputation, has accepted plea deals—Chutkan commenced to do so, commenting on the number of lawyers on both sides involved in the trial and the jurors’ time. “The same system you are railing against worked.”
While acknowledging Alford has no criminal record, Chutkan explained her ruling must act as “general deterrence” to warn others that the punishment for future insurrections will be “certain, swift, and serious.”
She then sentenced Alford to 12 months in prison, one month less than the Justice Department suggested. (Prosecutors asked for 13 months and accused Alford of spreading “disinformation” about the killing of Ashli Babbitt.) Her sentence is the longest imposed yet for a Trump supporter found guilty of 4 misdemeanors.
One might be inclined to laugh at the absurdity of it all except, of course, it’s not funny. Lives are being systematically destroyed to the obvious pleasure and gratification of taxpayer-paid lawyers and judges, who are the only ones smiling. Unfortunately for many innocent Americans, this theater of the absurd appears for now to be on an unlimited run.
The democRATs never seem to get the “showtrial” treatment.
DC jurors seem to be among America’s most stupid.
If you followed Bunkerville and the Oregon Standoff protest cases involving the Bundy Family these were the prototypes for the J6 operation.
The feds learned from their mistakes and perfected a big trap for J6 driven by their hatred of Trump, the COVID situation, even the George Floyd violence because the “Right” had to be demonized as violent and extreme.
Among the real insurrectionists of 2020 are the black-robed terrorists masquerading as “judges”.
The House has the power of the purse it. So use it.
This is a travesty for all.
“As judges hand down one absurd sentence after another…”
These judges have no doubt at on time or another contemplated moments in history such as the witch trials and wondered HOW men could fall so low. Now here they are, judges in witch trials attacking with heartfelt gleeful abandon. THATS HOW.
“DC jurors seem to be among America’s most stupid.”
Return DC back to Maryland. I suspect even Democrats in Congress would support that.
Oh my God in Heaven, display your mercy to those who hope in thee all the day.
The challenge coin thing is a stretch, and a stretch that they’re being used to make wild claims about the Proud Boys. They did trash talk with a lot of people about their “mission”, and were too large (way over a 2-3 person team) to maintain even a minimum of security. In other words, posers and jokes. The Proud Boys can’t be taken seriously, but in that day and days prior and that environment, they were taken seriously. That in almost all instances should not be a crime.
“During the Judges’ Trial at Nuremberg, Rothaug was sentenced to life imprisonment on 14 December 1947 for crimes against humanity. He was the only defendant to be convicted of crimes against humanity, but acquitted of war crimes. Nonetheless, the court commented in its judgment that:
‘By his manner and methods he made his court an instrumentality of terror and won the fear and hatred of the population. From the evidence of his closest associates as well as his victims, we find that Oswald Rothaug represented in Germany the personification of the secret Nazi intrigue and cruelty. He was and is a sadistic and evil man. Under any civilized judicial system he could have been impeached and removed from office or convicted of malfeasance in office on account of the scheming malevolence with which he administered injustice.’”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Rothaug
“the man photographed with his feet on a desk in Nancy Pelosi’s office....He faces decades in prison.”
A note - multiple people warned that going to DC in THAT DAY was a trap. Posters on FR were mocked for that stance.
But people still went. And then stupidly entered buildings without apparently anyone asking Capital Police “Hey, is it okay to go in here?” AND record that interaction. Because if such an interaction had been recorded by anyone that entered buildings, you know it would be posted far and wide. But nothing. Or they were told they could not legally enter.
FedGov is going to work to identify every last person who entered buildings at the Capital that day that were normally closed. And work to prosecute every one.
Just utter stupidity on the part of people who entered those buildings.
Meanwhile, Ray Epps is probably getting ready to have a Super Bowl party at his house with friends and family. His work is done, life goes o for him
That person was an idiot, but the person who whacked Paul Pelosi in the head with a hammer probably faces less time.
No they wouldn’t. Making DC a state gives them two more Democrat Senators.
I am re-reading “Atlas Shrugged” right now.
I am having difficulty seeing the difference between what is in the novel and what I am experiencing in real life.
“Who is John Galt?”
This series of Abominations troubles me greatly.
“Just utter stupidity on the part of people who entered those buildings.”
I totally disagree that participants were stupid. They were led to believe that the Capitol doors would open and they would be able to enter peacefully. I saw policemen open the doors and motion for people to enter in a line - and so they did, There was no shoving; they just filed in with the policeman calmly motioning for them to enter; they followed his directions. I watched for many hours life coverage of the hundreds gathered outside the Capitol, waiting to enter and then entering. They were orderly as orderly can be. Families, clean-up fathers and kids, seniors, etc. Everyone I saw looked like middle America. They clearly felt strongly enough about the well=documented evidence of election tampering to prevent President Trump’s continuing in office that they made their way to D.C. to stand up for America. It was cold, there was believed to be Covid in the air, making participation even more a principled act. Tens of thousands more of regular folks would have been there, had it been normal times. There is no doubt in my mind that the few who misbehaved were an inside set-up. The prosecution and persecution of Americans that has followed is nauseating. I am convinced that this show trial was and is intended to dissuade people from every participating in a peaceful protest ever again, so that the Marxist take-over of the U.S. can proceed unfettered in this four year period.
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