There are a lot of people who participated in the recent insurrection who are pooping their diapers right now, and I’m here for it. They seem to be shocked that they are actually being held accountable for breaking the law. It’s hilariously stupid.
Take, for instance, the case of Debra Maimone and Philip Vogel, two business owners from Pittsburgh. One of the slight surprises emerging from these proceeding is how many of these people are reasonably well-off, middle class small business owners by day, and shrieking MAGAts the instant they get on the internet. Maimone and Vogel are definitely in that category, and the capitol insurrection was their opportunity to bring their online persona out into real-world action. They still tried to hide their identities behind masks, but poorly, and the police have thoroughly documented their presence in the event (pdf). All those security cameras caught their every move, including when they briefly took the mask off to take a selfie (brilliant criminal minds at work), when they broke in, when they moved into very offices, and when they stole stuff from capitol security. In some ways, it’s rather chilling how completely they monitored every movement of these individuals.
They also got a bonanza of information from Parler. Hoo boy, Parler was like the Rosetta stone to break far-right coding. People had to register with real names and all kinds of confidential information, so once the police got that, they could trace all kinds of loud-mouthed assholery made under the cloak of anonymity (they thought!) straight to idiotic small business owners. Like this absurdity from Debra Maimone:
She praises those brave patriots who occupied the government building FULL OF TYRANTS
in one breath, and in the next insists oh no, she wasn’t in there. She was. She’s a chickenshit who just revealed that she knew her actions were illegal, but is going to deny it to avoid the consequences.
I’ll be mildly surprised if she gets the full ten-year sentence from the court, but I’ll be even more surprised if she escapes conviction or gets a trivial sentence — the case against her is awfully strong. She and Vogel are now out on $10,000 bail, but the tyrants have told her she can’t have any guns while awaiting trial.
Here’s their business, Vera General Contracting & Cleaning Services, and the Yelp reviews are amusing.
Super gross company. Owners are rude and outwardly racist. Asked me why I have a BLM sign in my yard saying they don’t work with people who support them. Umm… gee Karen how about because I’m black and I believe in equality.
I’m also a Christian so I forgive those who display hateful behavior–but it’s clear they are not because when I referenced John 13:34 they had no clue and seemed confused. Typical.
To add insult to injury they quoted me one price on the phone, but when they saw me they doubled it before even going inside my home.
It’s obvious that when they realized I’m a black woman they decided to try and screw me over.
This one is a little more succinct.
They promised me they’d do some work for me this weekend but now cannot as they have been arrested for being domestic terrorists.
Awww…
Cops’ posts to private Facebook group show hostility, hate
Finally, the mainstream media puts the spotlight on what’s important.
Spiders escape to higher ground during NSW floods
Mind you, the reason most of the Capitol insurrectionists were reasonably well off, is they’re the only ones who can play at being ‘patriots’ and afford the time and the transport costs to go there.
I wish it was stupid.
The have a lot of good reasons to think they will beat the rap.
Data.
The Malheur Wildlife Refuge Occupation.
Nothing much happened to most of the domestic terrorists who took over and trashed a major Wildlife Refuge.
Despite it happening on national TV and lasting for 6 weeks.
Most of the convictions the Feds got were through plea bagaining and mostly low level attackers on low level charges.
The leaders mostly were acquitted of all federal charges in trials.
There were a lot of reasons why the leaders escaped all the charges for the Malheur NWR takeover.
Some say the Federal prosecutors were inexperienced and didn’t do a good job.
It is just hard to prove the felony charges like Conspiracy, Insurrection, Terrorism, and so on.
Of course they were all white and middle class.
There is considerable sympathy in the population for white right wingnuts, aka Trump voters.
The prosecutors would have been well advised to stick to misdemeanor charges they could prove such as Vandalism, Littering, Trespassing, petty theft of services and materials, menacing with weapons, destruction of security cameras and so on.
It’s not glamorous when the Bundy brothers get convicted for trespassing but you go with what you have.
So are the Capitol Attack 400 going to beat the raps at jury trials?
Who knows.
They might or some of them at least.
If the Feds do what they did at Malheur, quite a few of them will walk free in jury trials.
They might want to just charge them with easily proved misdemeanors such as trespassing and vandalism.
And go for plea bargains on those.
It is necessary to reveal them as cowards, as a warning to the others.
One reason to be hopeful of convictions for the DC insurrectionists is that the jury pool in DC is less likely to acquit than the pool in Oregon.
I’ll be very surprised if most of them see jail time or significant fines, or if any of them get the sort of punishment that black people routinely get for less serious crimes. If there were a convenient way to keep track of all of it at once and bet while maintaining anonymity, I’d bet $1000 that less than a third of them will see any sort of sentence at all and that the average jail term for those who are sentenced is less than 2 years. Meanwhile, if you’re not white, you will go down for 10+ years for nonviolent offenses — if the police don’t kill you outright.
We’ve had 30 years of both parties chasing rightward rather than making principled stands (for the last two presidential elections that was not merely a deduction made by observation of de facto behavior but a flat-out statement of policy from the party leadership!) and the legal system is filled, top to bottom, with appointees made with that understanding. The Republicans are actually on trial, and the Democrats are currently led by a guy who thinks that the way to deal with vast, documented, undeniable police violence and deliberate far-right infiltration of every part of law enforcement is to give the police more money. There’s nobody in a position of authority who really wants punishment to happen, so it won’t.
Arrgh, I was sure I closed that tag. Sorry!
The Vicar@10,
You forgot to close the “blame the Democrats for everything” tag several years ago!
Yeah, I’ll be pretty shocked if most of these peoples’ jury trials don’t have at least one raving Trump lunatic. I mean, statistically they will and as we all know, people like that are quite happy to lie through their teeth.
That is, if prosecutors even try for real charges. A plea bargain for trespassing vs. the spectacle of another sedition mistrial? Oh my.
@#11, KG:
When they stop pretending to be against the Republicans but enabling everything the Republicans want, then I’ll stop blaming them for all the stuff they screw up.
Hey, did you notice that Obama has now admitted that all the drone bombing he did — killing thousands of people who were, post-facto, claimed to be terrorists regardless of who they were — was strategically useless, he only did it because he was afraid the Republicans would call him “soft on terror” if he stopped? If that doesn’t make you want Obama and everybody who enabled him punished in the most draconian way possible, then you are a bad person.
Ironically, here in Finland January 6 is a bank holiday, because it’s the Epiphany, known here as the “Ending day” of traditional Christmas season. If it were so in the US, common workers might’ve had a better access to joining the riot.
I saw Finnish media repeatedly refer to the incident as “Ending day event”, though I guess you could properly translate that as “Epiphany event”, which I find a darkly amusing pun.
Vicar@13
Oddly enough, I don’t find myself obsessing over draconian punishments for anyone, not even Trump, not even George W. Bush. Is that something you do a lot? Sure, it would be a better world in which Josef Mengele had been captured and brought to justice. Pinochet was also treated too kindly. But “draconian” is by definition “excessively harsh and severe.” Why would I wish for excess?
I find that the people who cause most of the trouble in the world are the ones bent on meting out draconian punishments, determined primarily by their fixed idea of how the world is supposed to be. I would begin by asking what practical purpose does the “punishment” serve? Can you make a plausible deterrence argument? If so, how do you get the outcome you’re seeking while minimizing the overall increase in suffering.
There’s some doubt over whether Gandhi actually said “An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.” but those are still words that I live by.
As for Obama. Yes, obviously he was caught up in the whole national security cult, and there is no real surprise there. He pioneered an approach of “smart and sustainable warfare.” Actually, it was something else he called smart and sustainable, but whatever he thought he was trying to do, the likely result looked like a war that could go on literally forever at a slow boil. I like some things about Obama, and that’s not one of them. I am not really that into racks and thumbscrews. Sounds like you are maybe, and this could explain a lot about our different outlooks.
I find myself almost agreeing with Vicar on this. I’m 66, old enough to remember the Civil Rights Movement and COINTELPRO. You’d think things would have changed near the end of my life, but no.
@16
when that kind of racism is just as dead as the pilgrim religious sect is and at least has as much influence as it does now will we be free of it.
I’m 74 parts of this sucks still but there are changes for the good
uncle frogy
So I guess you want everyone who voted for Obama burned at the stake. Or maybe that’s not draconian enough for you. I’ll let you know if I ever come to give a shit about your opinion of me. Don’t hold your breath.