Right-wing Domestic Terrorism

[LFC]

The right-wing domestic terrorists are now a solid part of the Republican Party.

Salon reporter Zachary Petrizzo confirms that Oath Keepers founder and leader Stewart Rhodes was at CPAC in Dallas last night as an officially credentialed guest hobnobbing the the elite of the Republican party and conservative movement.

Rhodes was not himself at the January 6th insurrection but he’s the leader of one of the two domestic terrorist groups currently being investigated by the FBI for their role planning and carrying out the January 6th insurrection. He’s at the center of the investigation, as Matt Shuham discussed here as recently as yesterday evening.

And yet, there he was, a guest in good standing at the biggest annual GOP get together. The leaders of the GOP continue to hobnob literally with the folks behind the insurrection. As we’ve discussed, President Trump is making vindication for the Jan 6th insurrectionists the central theme of his 2022 electioneering. The party he leads is following his lead.

Here's more background on Rhodes. He's a corrupt, danger, democracy hating liar who believes anything is justified to retain power. Is it any wonder he fits so comfortably into the GOP power structure?

[LFC]

A terrorists involved in the Jan. 6 Republican Insurrection whines he's being cancelled. If only.

Judge, don’t cancel me!

That was the essence of the 31-page sentencing memorandum from Capitol rioter Paul Hodgkins, 38, of Tampa, who pleaded guilty to obstructing an official proceeding last month and likely faces one or two years in prison.

“We now live in a county that seeks to cancel one another,” Hodgkins’ attorney Patrick N. Leduc wrote in the memo. “It is the end state and the result of becoming a post-Christian society.”

Hodgkins was one in a group of rioters who briefly occupied the Senate chamber during the attack, taking with him a “Trump 2020” flag and mean-mugging for a quick insurrection selfie.

Here's how his lawyer portrayed this traitor to America. It makes me want to puke.

“This case is the story of a man who represents all that we would want in our fellow Americans,” Leduc said near the beginning of the sentencing memo. “Law-abiding, hardworking, honest, caring, kind, thoughtful, generous, and the kind of person you would love to have for a neighbor. It is the story of man who for just one hour on one day, lost his bearings and his way.”

So it went: Hodgkins had a momentary lapse of judgement, Leduc argued, and the court’s treatment of him would send a message to the rest of the nation.

“Paul is an avatar of us all, and how this Court deals with his misconduct will say much about where we are and what we will become as a nation,” the memo argued, adding later, “the prize that the Mr. Hodgkins received for being in the Capitol is unwanted notoriety, and the scarlet letter that many of his fellow citizens will compel him to wear, without an ounce of knowledge or understanding of the man he now is.” (A footnote in the memo helpfully noted that Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter “explores guilt, revenge, and redemption in colonial America.”)

The tension between “grace and vengeance,” Leduc added, is a throughline in American history, and is now represented in the effort to “cancel” his client.

[LFC]

There's a "recommendation" that two Seattle police officers involved in the Jan. 6 Republican Insurrection be fired. My instant response is, why the F*** is this even a question?

In the end, the accounts provided by two unnamed Seattle police officers who attended the Capitol riot on Jan. 6 were “simply not credible,” the Seattle Police Department’s oversight office reported Thursday, recommending that the pair be fired for their actions that day.

The conclusion from the Seattle Office of Police Accountability (OPA), an internal oversight body, came after months of investigation into six officers identified as being present at Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 rally in D.C. Four of the officers either did not attend the riot that followed, or in one case, may have attended it but did not leave an evidence trail sufficient to place them at the scene, the office’s closed case summary stated.

“Named Employee” 1 and 2, on the other hand, were caught in the act: Video stills from that day provided to the oversight investigators by the FBI “showed NE#1 and NE#2 directly next to the side of U.S. Capitol Building,” the report stated.

[LFC]

Trump is supporting the traitors. Pelosi just backhanded Trump right in the ego along with the Republican Insurrection Caucus.

Twice-impeached Florida retiree – and de facto leader of the Republican Party – Donald Trump joined House Republicans today in disrespecting the Capitol Police and other law enforcement officers, who valiantly defended the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, decrying how rioters “are being treated unbelievably unfairly” now that they are facing legal consequences for their actions.

Huffington Post:

“Donald Trump on Wednesday defended the domestic terrorists who assaulted the Capitol on his behalf on Jan. 6 as he announced federal lawsuits against social media companies — lawsuits that could make him testify under oath about his actions that day.”

“Asked what he did to defuse the mob attack on Jan. 6, the day that triggered his social media banishment, Trump instead complained about how harshly his rioters were being treated by authorities.”

Like Donald, House Republicans have shown time and time again that they stand with traitors – not with our law enforcement.

[Bact PhD]

“This case is the story of a man who represents all that we would want in our fellow Americans,” Leduc said near the beginning of the sentencing memo. “Law-abiding, hardworking, honest, caring, kind, thoughtful, generous, and the kind of person you would love to have for a neighbor. It is the story of man who for just one hour on one day, lost his bearings and his way.”

So it went: Hodgkins had a momentary lapse of judgement, Leduc argued, and the court’s treatment of him would send a message to the rest of the nation.

"Lapse of judgment," huh? Betcha quite a few folks currently on Death Row for murder could also claim they had a "lapse of judgment." Haven't right-wingers for the last four decades been overwhelmingly pooh-poohing the Insanity Defense in capital murder cases?

Oh, wait...

[LFC]

Trump flat out lies about what happened at the Jan. 6 Insurrection, continues to deny the violence, and you can expect the Republican Insurrection Caucus to follow right along.

Earlier this morning President Trump insisted that the January 6th insurrection actually amounted to a “lovefest between the Capitol Police and the people who walked down to the Capitol.” He also continued his effort to incite a lynch mob to take revenge on the officer who shot Ashli Babbitt and as she broke into the House Speaker’s lobby and demanded the release of all January 6th arrestees.

Josh Marshall
@joshtpm

Trump calls insurrection: "a lovefest between the capitol police and the people that walked down to the capitol ... who shot Ashli Babbitt and why are they holding that information back? They have to release to the people that are incarcerated."

You should expect members of Congress over the coming weeks to get behind this demand to drop charges against everyone charged with crimes related to the insurrection.

As I’ve sought to argue, vindication for the January 6th insurrection and retribution against the man who shot Ashli Babbitt are going to be the centerpiece of the 2022 campaign. Everyone needs to come up to speed on that fact quickly.

[goldenvalley]

McConnell has no soul. He apparently can ignore what Trump and the enablers say. He's 79 years old and he won't be living with the results of all this. I guess he's amassed enough personal wealth to insulate his grandchildren from it.

[pnwguy]

Jul 12, 2021 16:14:00 GMT goldenvalley said:

McConnell has no soul. He apparently can ignore what Trump and the enablers say. He's 79 years old and he won't be living with the results of all this. I guess he's amassed enough personal wealth to insulate his grandchildren from it.

I hope all his wealth is tied up in Kentucky coal company stock.

[LFC]

Jul 12, 2021 16:21:15 GMT pnwguy said:

Jul 12, 2021 16:14:00 GMT goldenvalley said:

McConnell has no soul. He apparently can ignore what Trump and the enablers say. He's 79 years old and he won't be living with the results of all this. I guess he's amassed enough personal wealth to insulate his grandchildren from it.

I hope all his wealth is tied up in Kentucky coal company stock.

I suspect a lot of it is invested in his wife's family's shipping business in China.

[indy]

Jul 12, 2021 17:45:09 GMT LFC said:

Jul 12, 2021 16:21:15 GMT pnwguy said:

I hope all his wealth is tied up in Kentucky coal company stock.

I suspect a lot of it is invested in his wife's family's shipping business in China.

As you may recall, part of Biden's recent executive order directed 'the Federal Maritime Commission to crack down on "unjust and unreasonable fees" in the ocean shipping industry and work with the Justice Department to investigate anticompetitive practices.'

I laughed a little when I read that the first time, wondering if there wasn't something a little personal in it.

[LFC]

You get 3 guesses who nominated this judge to the bench. Ready, set, go.

A federal judge agreed on Tuesday to free an insurrectionist from jail after he was caught on camera chasing a police officer up two flights of stairs inside the Capitol building during the Jan. 6 riots.

Douglas Jensen, 41, donned a QAnon T-shirt when he breached the complex and joined a mob that confronted Capitol police officer Eugene Goodman. He now faces charges including civil disorder and assaulting, resisting, or impeding a law enforcement officer. Prosecutors have insisted he poses a danger to the public after becoming a “poster boy” for the events that unfolded on Jan. 6.

After calling it a “close case,” U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly agreed to Jensen’s release on house arrest with electronic monitoring. Kelly said Jensen’s actions were “deeply concerning and quite serious,” but added that Jensen is not accused of roughing up property or getting into any Capitol brawls. Kelly also said that a video which shows Jensen referring to the Capitol building as the White House suggested that he could not have coordinated with others or planned an attack in advance “when he had no basic understanding of where he even was that day.”

[goldenvalley]

No understanding of where he was that day? He was what? Walking while unconscious? Just happened to be strolling in the same general direction that the officer was?

[pnwguy]

Jul 13, 2021 19:55:41 GMT goldenvalley said:

No understanding of where he was that day? He was what? Walking while unconscious? Just happened to be strolling in the same general direction that the officer was?

It will be the Flip Wilson defense.  "The Devil made me do it"

[LFC]

Whoa, Pence actually stood up for our nation (paywalled) at the Jan. 6 Republican Insurrection. No wonder Trump was so angry with him. If he had just run away like he was supposed to the entire process would have been suspended in limbo for who knows how long. Read that last paragraph. Cheezes f***ing christ on a cracker.

Then-Vice President Mike Pence refused to get in a car to leave the Capitol building after being evacuated from his ceremonial office on Jan. 6, primarily because he knew it would prevent him from doing his job — certifying President Biden’s electoral college victory.

That’s according to new details from the Washington Post’s Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig’s new book “I Alone Can Fix It.” The book was also the source of the revelation that Joint Chiefs chair General Mark Milley feared Trump might launch a coup. There’s been plenty of angry reaction about why we’re only learning this now, more than half a year later.

The latest excerpt reveals, based on what it says are scenes “reconstructed based on firsthand accounts,” that Pence initially refused to leave the Capitol on the afternoon of Jan. 6, as the mob of insurrectionists breached the building shouting about wanting to hang him. It was around the same time Trump tweeted that his Veep didn’t have “the courage” to overturn the 2020 election.

The lead agent in charge of Pence’s protective detail, Tim Giebels, reportedly asked the VP twice to evacuate the building, as he was still in his ceremonial office on the Hill. Pence reportedly told Giebels that seeing his motorcade fleeing the building would only vindicate the mob that stormed it looking for him, as well as attempting to halt democracy.

“They’re in the building,” Giebels said the third time he told Pence he needed to move. “The room you’re in is not secure. There are glass windows. I need to move you. We’re going.”

Pence agreed and was taken to a “secure subterranean area,” in the Post’s words, where his armored vehicle awaited. He was asked to get in the car and “hold here.”

“I’m not getting in the car, Tim,” Pence replied. “I trust you, Tim, but you’re not driving the car. If I get in that vehicle, you guys are taking off. I’m not getting in the car.”

Pence and his family were then moved to a secure location underground to wait out the attack, according to the new excerpt. Around this time back in the West Wing, there were conversations about moving Pence to Joint Base Andrews, but Pence’s national security advisor Keith Kellogg intervened.

“Leave him where he’s at. He’s got a job to do. I know you guys too well. You’ll fly him to Alaska if you have a chance. Don’t do it,” Kellogg said, according to the new book.

[goldenvalley]

Pence is yet another person in Trump's circle who will claim that he prevented Trump from doing something really horrible. There was a least one place Pence wouldn't go in his attempt to toady to Trump and run for president in 2024. But as to his performance for the rest of the Trump Administration...abysmal. Even if he kept out of Trump's circle as much as possible he had to know during his chairmanship of the COVID task force what nasty things were happening and yet said nothing.

[LFC]

Jul 16, 2021 15:35:45 GMT goldenvalley said:

Pence is yet another person in Trump's circle who will claim that he prevented Trump from doing something really horrible. There was a least one place Pence wouldn't go in his attempt to toady to Trump and run for president in 2024. But as to his performance for the rest of the Trump Administration...abysmal. Even if he kept out of Trump's circle as much as possible he had to know during his chairmanship of the COVID task force what nasty things were happening and yet said nothing.

Seriously. "See! There was ONE line I didn't cross!" doesn't make for a great defense.

[LFC]

Another pair of right-wing domestic terrorists get caught. It's just a matter of time before they kill.

Two California men have been indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly plotting to attack the Democratic Party headquarters in Sacramento, part of what prosecutors say was a plan to inspire a “movement” among “patriots” following the 2020 election.

The indictment comes six months after one of the men was arrested on weapons charges after law enforcement allegedly found several pipe bombs at his home and business.

Jarrod Copeland and Ian Benjamin Rogers were charged federally in an indictment unsealed Wednesday. Rogers has faced months of state and federal court dates for the weapons charges, including unregistered possession of an explosive device, and has not yet entered a plea to the latest charges. Copeland pleaded not guilty Thursday.

“Prompted by the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election, on November 25, 2020, Rogers and Copeland began to plan an attack against a target or targets they associated with Democrats,” the federal indictment against the men read.

“By November 29, 2020, they had identified the John L. Burton Democratic Headquarters in Sacramento, California, as their first target, and made plans to attack it using incendiary devices. Rogers and Copeland believed that the attacks would start what they called a ‘movement.’ They discussed the attack in detail and on numerous occasions.”

[LFC]

This post about right-wing anti-vaxxers belongs here. They ... are ... killing ... people. Fortunately President Biden is on the counter-attack.

President Joe Biden's statement Friday that social media giants were "killing people" by propagating anti-vaccine content sent conservative media into a meltdown, but in railing on its recent hobby horse, the White House certainly has one fact right: far-right content, especially anti-vax messages, performs very well on these platforms. Especially Facebook.

But one savvy move in particular by the Biden team this week appears to have significantly cut into that lead: a White House appearance Wednesday by the pop star Olivia Rodrigo to promote COVID-19 vaccination.

"We need to reach people, meet people where they are and speaking to young people -- people who are under the age of 18," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said during a briefing.

Even taking just the past week alone, anti-vaccine posts by right-wing personalities like Candace Owens, Ben Shapiro and Dan Bongino dominated Facebook's news feed, garnering hundreds of thousands of interactions, according to data from Crowdtangle, a publicly available analytics tool run by Facebook.

In fact, a Crowdtangle analysis by the politics and advertising newsletter FWIW shows 12 of the top 15 vaccine-related posts on the platform earlier this week were negative. One video in particular dominated Facebook's algorithm for much of the week: a selfie-style live talkback with right-wing pundit Candace Owens, in which she encourages people to leave or get fired from their jobs for flouting vaccine rules because "no job is worth your health." The post was shared more than 130,000 times and currently has more than 4 million views.

Enter Olivia Rodrigo.

The "good 4 u" singer's White House appearance sent political Twitter into a tizzy, but it appears the real impact of the strategy was felt on Facebook — where at least three posts from the event catapulted into the platform's top 15 over the next three days, according to a Salon analysis, while the misinformation-filled Candace Owens video that had previously been everywhere on Facebook fell out of the leaderboard entirely.

The top post on the platform is now a picture of Biden and Rodrigo donning the president's signature aviator sunglasses.

The other two include a video that Rodrigo recorded with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House COVID-19 advisor, in which the pair read vaccine tweets, and a selfie of the pop star and Biden, in which she gushes about how excited she is to be at the White House.

[LFC]

A right-wing domestic terrorists who participated in the Jan. 6 Republican Insurrection was convicted of a felony and given 8 months.

A man who pleaded guilty to breaching the Senate chamber during the US Capitol insurrection was sentenced Monday to eight months in prison in a closely watched case that could influence how hundreds of other rioters charged with the same felony are punished.

Paul Hodgkins, a 38-year-old Floridian, is now the first Capitol rioter convicted of a felony to be sentenced. He pleaded guilty last month to obstructing congressional proceedings -- specifically, the counting of the electoral votes, which he helped delay on January 6. He spent about 15 minutes inside the Senate chamber, wearing a Donald Trump shirt and carrying a Trump flag.

The sentence is far less than the 1.5-year prison term that the Justice Department requested. At a hearing Monday, prosecutors argued that 1.5 years would deter future political violence and send a strong warning to "people who may be contemplating a second act" after January 6.

District Judge Randolph Moss departed from that recommendation. He said Hodgkins contributed to a grave offense against democracy but deserved some leniency because he pleaded guilty "exceptionally early," wasn't involved in violence and issued a "sincere" apology.

He expressed remorse and claimed to be getting his life together. 

Hodgkins made a 10-minute statement during the hearing, where he apologized for his actions and begged the judge to spare him from prison so he wouldn't lose his job and his rental home.

"I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I am truly remorseful and regretful for my actions in Washington, DC, on January 6. ... I say this because of the damage that day's incident caused and the way this country that I love has been hurt," Hodgkins said.

He continued, "I came to DC with the intention of supporting a president I love at his event and participating in a march on Pennsylvania Avenue. The storming of the US Capitol building was not something I had any idea would happen."

He said he acknowledges that President Joe Biden is the legitimate president. He told the judge that he started going to church, stopped drinking alcohol and that he took the Covid-19 vaccine.

And then his lawyer spoke. Good lord almighty. Somebody should have told Hodgkins that for this particular case it was probably best not to use a lawyer who was NOT a right-wing nutjob.

After Hodgkins spoke, his attorney Patrick Leduc gave a rambling 30-minute presentation where he quoted Abraham Lincoln, invoked the Japanese internment during World War II, decried "cancel culture" and argued that the rioters who stormed the Capitol weren't "real terrorists."

During a break in the hearing, Hodgkins' mother told Leduc, "you talk too much."

BTW the judge is an Obama appointee. If the attorney thought he'd find a sympathetic ear then he's even dumber than he sounds.

[Deleted]

Not to worry. A general amnesty is coming in early 2025. All records would be expunged.

[LFC]

Jul 19, 2021 19:52:49 GMT @probabilistic3 said:

Not to worry. A general amnesty is coming in early 2025. All records would be expunged.

So the nation can "heal." Excuse me, "heel."

[LFC]

Can't remember if this popped up here in another thread but it really is the quiet part out loud. Blaringly loud.

Hardcore Trump rallygoer and bit player insurrectionist quoted in The Washington Post: “It just looked so neat. We weren’t there to steal things. We weren’t there to do damage. We were just there to overthrow the government.”

Ironically, Saundra Kiczenski’s quote sounds pretty much like what Trump is now saying. Like him, she says there’s no reason for anyone to be in jail or facing charges: “It’s ridiculous those people are in prison for no reason. And it’s a shame because if Donald Trump were still the president, they’d all be free.”

It took a few months but the Republican Party has gone from avoiding the topic of the Jan. 6 Republican Insurrection to poo-pooing its seriousness to defending the traitors with lies to now embracing it. Actually the only thing that suprises me is that it took this long to get where that at now.

[LFC]

Jul 19, 2021 19:49:46 GMT LFC said:

A right-wing domestic terrorists who participated in the Jan. 6 Republican Insurrection was convicted of a felony and given 8 months.

More on what the judge had to say. It's clear he took this case very seriously.

“Democracy requires the cooperation of the governed,” Moss said. “When a mob is prepared to attack the Capitol, to prevent our elected officials from both parties from performing their constitutional and statutory duty, democracy is in trouble.”

[snip]

“The symbolism of that act is unmistakable,” Moss said. “He was staking a claim on the floor of the United States Senate not with an American flag, but with a flag declaring his loyalty to a single individual over the nation.”

“In that act, he captured the theft of democracy that we all witnessed that day,” the judge added.

[pnwguy]

Jul 19, 2021 19:52:49 GMT @probabilistic3 said:

Not to worry. A general amnesty is coming in early 2025. All records would be expunged.

Amon Donald The Good.  "I pardon you"

[Deleted]

Jul 19, 2021 20:49:21 GMT LFC said:

Jul 19, 2021 19:52:49 GMT @probabilistic3 said:

Not to worry. A general amnesty is coming in early 2025. All records would be expunged.

So the nation can "heal." Excuse me, "heel."

None of that namby-pamby peacenik stuff. It'll be done just so because it makes the right kinda people crazy.