Saturday, January 06, 2024

More Epiphanies

Is Antifa standing next to you right now? America’s Mayor, ladies and gentlemen. Oddly enough, not a defense raised in over 900 court cases. Something to do with evidence…?
Of the approximately 1,200 rioters arrested in relation to the deadly January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, roughly 900 have pleaded guilty or have been convicted in a trial. 
Many of those defendants' lawyers argued — some successfully — that their clients were simply too gullible and were taken advantage of in the heat of the moment. 
... 
According to NBC, several defendants involved in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol previously argued that they were hoodwinked by the former president's rhetoric. 
College student Gabriel Chase, who is affiliated with the far-right America First movement (also known as "groypers"), described himself in court proceedings as "someone who made the stupidest decision of my life because I was gullible enough to believe the lies of people who were using me for their own aggrandizement." 
He was ultimately sentenced to probation for a misdemeanor violation. 
Attorneys for Pennsylvania resident Peter Schwarz argued in a sentencing memo that their client was "motivated by a misunderstanding as to the facts surrounding the 2020 election." 
"There remain many grifters out there who remain free to continue propagating the 'great lie' that Trump won the election, Donald Trump being among the most prominent," Schwarz' lawyers wrote.
I guess some grifters are in Congress… 🤷🏻‍♂️  Oops. Free and unfettered access to the market. Or conservatism at work. Either way. Antifa ratted ‘em out! I seen it!
Specifically, while it seems that my assumption from last summer — that Jack Smith chose to charge just Trump first, presumably in a bid to get to trial before the election — was correct, we have no idea what he plans from here forward. A filing in December even revealed that there are others, besides the six identified in the Trump indictment, that the government plans to treat as unindicted co-conspirators at Trump’s eventual trial. Given the prosecution’s plan to introduce Trump’s shout out — “stand back and stay by” — to the Proud Boys, that suggests DOJ might even treat the seditious militia as Trump’s co-conspirators. We don’t know what Jack Smith planned to do with all the other co-conspirators last summer. 
We don’t know what he plans to do with them now. 
Unlike the Mueller investigation, we don’t even know all the prosecutors Jack Smith has working for him. We didn’t even hear that Michael Dreeben had returned to government to work for him until his name appeared on an appellate brief. There are at least four AUSAs who have not shown up, not recently anyway, in public filings. I’m quite certain they haven’t been twiddling their thumbs in the last year. 
What we do know, however, is that Jack Smith team members JP Cooney and Molly Gaston both survived the aftermath of the Mueller investigation, the former in dealing with the aftermath of the Roger Stone resignations, and the latter in the aftermath of the Paul Manafort prosecution. They know how Trump pardoned his way out of a Russian conspiracy charge in 2020. They likely have some ideas about how to avoid that this time around (which may be why Smith hasn’t indicted any of Trump’s co-conspirators yet).
Jack Smith has an Antifa secret decoder ring! I seen it!
Since Judge Chutkan stayed proceedings for Trump’s immunity appeal, Jack Smith’s team has continued submitting filings — including the 404(b) notice warning prosecutors would raise Trump’s support for the Proud Boys at trial. And it’s driving Trump nuts; he even asked Judge Chutkan to hold Jack Smith in contempt for continuing to meet deadlines that she has stayed (issuing a filing complaining that they’re issuing filings!). One way to create the opportunity to tell more of the story of January 6, as Trump attempts to keep it out of the news through the primaries, is to indict more people, possibly sub-conspiracies tied to each of Trump’s identified co-conspirators. 
Jack Smith made a choice last summer to only indict Trump at that time. But if the DC Circuit creates further delays in prosecuting Trump, Smith can make a different choice now. 
We don’t know what his team has been doing while Gaston and Thomas Windom have been the primary faces of the prosecution. But he has cards left to play.
So many shoes to drop. 😎 

OTOH: I dunno. Seems to me the easiest thing to do is to label your political opponents “morons.” And then to say that’s what makes them successful… But what success has Trump had? He’s lost two libel suits, a fraud suit (the trial was largely for damages; the fraud has been found), faces four criminal cases, and is leading in the Republican primaries only in polls, which may or may not reflect the will of the voters. And his supporters are: marks, cowards, fascists, and people who only think Trump will bring them power (the same attitude that has reduced the GOP House majority to its slimmest margin possible).

Quite a winning coalition! 

Trump is a con man, and his con has never appealed to the majority of voters. By now, he’s down to the few for whom the sunk cost of belief is all they can pay.
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