I sincerely hope that Trump, if he wins the 2024 election, pardons every single J6 protestor who has been convicted. I also sincerely hope that he tears apart the FBI, ATF and DOJ – but he’ll probably just get funding to build them new beautiful buildings instead.
This is part three of a three-part post about the events and aftermath of the Capitol building riots of January 6, 2021 by Trump supporters.
| PART 1 Insurrection and Sedition. Crime and Punishment. | PART 2 Legal Defence. The Process Is The Punishment. | PART 3 Political Prisoners Criminalising Dissent |
Political Prisoners!
This Human Events article drew a clear comparison between what Putin has done to one Evan Gershkovich in Russia and what is being done to the J6 prisoners:
- Large scale use of solitary confinement.
- ”a kangaroo court keeps dutifully prolonging [Evan’s] detention without trial.” (WSJ quote)
- Trials based solely on government produced evidence. Defendants often have their attorney-client privileges violated.
- Some J6 prisoners have committed suicide while others have lost hair and eyesight due to malnourishment. Deprived of visitors and religious services, they rot in cells with mice and cockroaches.
- DC is the most Democrat-voting district in the USA. Its judges almost unwaveringly grant prosecutors’ motions to forbid defendants from even mentioning their First Amendment rights.
- Many judges have punished J6 defendants with “obstruction of justice” enhancements if they dare to testify in their own defence.
- One journalist, Steve Baker, documented that prosecutors and government witnesses committed blatant perjury in at least one trial. Biden’s DOJ didn’t investigate but charged Baker with crimes.
- The conviction rate for J6ers is 100% before juries; and more than 99.5% before judges. I don’t think even North Korea and Saddam’s Iraq achieved that.
- The average prison sentences for J6ers are by far the longest in American history associated with rioting or demonstrating.
And here’s another similarity: the ability of outsiders to see these prisoners, even when they’re politicians:
Reps. Greene, Gohmert, Gaetz, and Gosar tried, unsuccessfully, to visit the January 6 political prisoners twice earlier this year. They were turned back for no stated reasons. They sent a congressional letter and forced a confrontation with the D.C. mayor’s office and the Washington D.C. Department of Corrections (DOC) staff just so they could inspect a jail that “they have the right, prerogative, and duty as of Members of Congress to inquire and inspect.”
Greene and Gohmert (and their respective staffs) finally got to tour the D.C. jail where the J6 inmates are held, though the jail staff DID try to end the tour of the jail before the reps got to meet the political prisoners. “What is there to hide?” Gohmert pressed. “The complaint has been that they’ve been treated differently than the other detainees. I thought tonight we were going to find out.” At that point, the tour had already lasted two hours and Greene and Gohmert hadn’t yet met a single J6 inmate. After an 11-minute discussion, the tour went forward.
…
Other inmates have access to flat-screen TVs, (largely anti-American) reading materials, and medical care.
They finally did meet forty J6 prisoners and the details of their awful conditions were published in a report by the members of Congress – not that it changed anything. As I said in Part 2, the process is the punishment:
The congressional visit to the D.C. jail on November 4 unquestionably proved that there is a two-track justice system in the United States. This two-tiered system is not based on race, violence, or conviction of crime, but politics.
Herewith a couple of specific prisoner examples.
Judge Mehta took his time berating the Oath Keeper founder Rhodes while sentencing him to decades in prison:
“You, sir, present an ongoing threat and a peril to this country, to the republic and to the very fabric of our democracy. You are smart, you are compelling, and you are charismatic. Frankly, that is what makes you dangerous.”
Oh come on! Stewart Rhodes and the Oath Keepers are not a “threat” to the country or a “peril” to the “fabric of our democracy,” whatever that dramatic nonsense means – but which notably matches the Democrat Party attacks on Trump.
They are not “dangerous” in the sense of Islamic Jihadist cells or even the likes of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, themselves exceptions among these tiny groups. Even before this the Oath Keepers were powerless and isolated. But sure, now the government has made sure that they’re bankrupt, broken, and ruined for life as well – which may end up having the same effect on others that Ruby Ridge had on McVeigh & Nichols, as well souring millions of more moderate Right-wingers. They traveled to the nation’s capital to protest an election that they felt was rigged to favour Joe Biden and they joined in a riot that was mild by the standards of the anti-Trump ones of 2017 when cars and buildings burned in Washington D.C.
No, the real threat to America are actually people like Matthew Graves and Amit Mehta – arrogant, unaccountable apparatchiks of a regime hellbent on crushing political opposition to them. Wrongthink punished, federal law bastardised, evidence manufactured from harmless group chats, presumption of innocence flipped on its head, due process denied, the Bill of Rights buried under a mountain of political revenge.
Doubt this? Read about the treatment of J6 prisoner Jake Lang:
[Lang] has been incarcerated for three and a half years as a pre-trial detainee, has spent 800 days in solitary confinement for ridiculous infractions, such as accepting an interview with the media. Lang’s attorneys filed a Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus in April, alleging that he “continues to be held and transferred in violation of his constitutional and human rights.” Lang told me that the “FBI hunted us down like animals” after J6. He said he refused to take a 10-year prison sentence as part of a plea bargain offered to him, because “I don’t negotiate with terrorists.”
Heh. Not a bad description of the FBI and WTF – at least as far American citizens are concerned.
He is currently [2024] being held at Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York. New York state law states that prisoners may be held no longer than 15 days in solitary confinement, but he was held there 36 days. He said he was only allowed out of the cell for two hours a week, not allowed to have books or a radio. State law requires at least four hours a day outside of a cell while in solitary confinement, including one hour for recreation.
I had to laugh when his fellow J6 prisoners who issued a letter stating that they would rather be serving time at Guantanamo Bay, where terrorists are incarcerated. This is the Democrat Party, the Left, that is in charge of the Department of Justice. Check out the bodycam documented use of pepper spray on the inmates.
In Part 1 I already referred to one of the grandmas convicted of “parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building.”, but this detail about her punishment is unusual to say the least:
Her court-appointed lawyer had her read and watch Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Just Mercy, and Schindler’s List, evidence that she was on her way to renouncing her white privilege. What does racism and exterminationist antisemitism have to do with the nonviolent crime she committed? Nothing, of course. The Biden administration sees Jan. 6 as a platform to criminalize its opponents, and the only way out for Donald Trump supporters is to confess to thought-crimes.
A reeducation camp in America. And the MSM is all in on it, with just one aspect being that unlike the 9/11 and 1995 Murrah Building attacks, where the MSM dived into research and interviews of relatives of the attackers…
So who has The New York Times or 60 Minutes dispatched to interview the families of the Jan. 6 “insurrectionists”? If the press really believes its own interpretation of events, why isn’t it devoting resources to reporting the story on the ground? Because it’s not a story. Rather, it’s just another in an ongoing series of third-world style information operations targeting one-half of America to warn them what might happen if they start to ask inconvenient questions.
Criminalising Dissent!
But the FBI certainly has gone after the families of those they’ve arrested for J6 crimes in what can only be described as criminalising political dissent against the Democrat Biden Administration:
Christopher Worrell
In the early hours of March 12, FBI agents in southwestern Florida barricaded a neighborhood to prepare to raid the home of one resident. Christopher Worrell of Cape Coral was arrested and charged with several counts related to the January 6 Capitol melee. Even though Worrell had been cooperating with the FBI for two months, the agency nonetheless unleashed a massive, and no doubt costly, display of force to take him into custody. Law enforcement agents, according to one neighbor who spoke with a reporter, wore “whole outfits . . . like military and it was crazy. There was like six or seven . . . big black vehicles. They busted down the front door.” The raid included “armed men with helmets and a tanker truck” and was partially executed by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force.
Worrell never entered the Capitol building and was not accused of any violent crime. But calmly arresting such a person would not have the intimidatory effect required on fellow citizens: it has to be done Stasi style.
Paul and Marilyn Hueper
Paul and Marilyn Hueper, owners of Homer Inn & Spa, woke with a start at 9 a.m. April 28 when a dozen armed FBI agents kicked down their front door in an investigation associated with Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s stolen laptop, which was taken during the Jan. 6 siege of the nation’s Capitol.
…
Ultimately, the couple was handcuffed and interrogated for the better part of three hours before being released. In the end, it was a case of mistaken identity.
Joseph Bolanos
[69 year old Bolanos] was well-respected in his community, always coming to the aid of others. As the president of his local block association in New York City, he has always looked out for his neighbors, particularly over this past year during the pandemic doing things to raise morale. He even became a Red Cross volunteer after 9/11, and he also once saved a woman when someone tried to mug her. On top of all that, he takes care of his elderly mother, who is 94.
Sounds decent enough, but he made the mistake of attending President Donald Trump’s rally on Jan. 6 with a friend and even though he never went into the Capitol building, the FBI tracked him down and turned up at his mother’s place unannounced in 2021 for a little chat of 25 minutes before buggering off after he showed them evidence that he wasn’t in the building. And then…
The next Thursday at 6 a.m., he was awakened in his mother’s apartment by loud banging. “I opened the door and there’s about 10 tactical police soldiers and one is pointing a rifle at my head. [They had] a battering ram and a crowbar.” They also had a search warrant, issued by District Judge Gabriel Gorenstein, which named Bolanos as the “target subject.” The front door of his empty apartment was being broken down in a simultaneous raid. The warrant authorized the federal agents to seize his property as evidence relating to crimes including “obstruction of Congress,” “civil disorders,” “conspiracy to impede/assault federal agents,” “interstate travel to participate in riot,” and “unlawful entry on restricted buildings or grounds.” He was handcuffed and taken outside to an FBI car to be interrogated for four hours.
All the usual shit. And there was also the usual leak from the DOJ/FBI to the local media, just like what was done with Roger Stone’s arrest.
An NBC camera crew had been tipped off and was there to film his shame. NBC quoted “sources” saying charges against him were imminent. The story would be repeated in two local publications.
He’s never been charged with anything and didn’t get his cellphone back. But the message was sent to everyone who knew him and everyone who saw the story in the MSM.
There’s plenty more like that from the FBI, who made all of the following arrests with all the usual armoured and armed-up agents for the big show:
- The FBI conducted a pre-dawn raid at the home of three January 6 suspects in Florida (including an EMT – who got fired, natch) , which scared the shit out of the family members not arrested.
- A Florida pastor and his son were arrested for their alleged involvement in the January 6 protest. and although neither is accused of committing a violent crime, the son was arrested by the FBI in front of his three-year-old daughter.
- The “best” story found by the reporter, Julie Kelly, was an FBI raid of a home at 9:30 p.m. on a Sunday night by twenty agents with the arrest on the usual charges in front of their young child, but with the wife then separated and interrogated by three FBI agents who asked her shit like: who they voted for, what political party they supported, what news channels they watched and their views on immigration, including the border wall, if they followed QAnon or belonged to the Oath Keepers.
- Lois Lynn McNicoll (69) entered the Capitol building through an open door, took some pictures, and was then ushered out by the police. She didn’t vandalise anything, steal anything, or attack anyone, so naturally she felt fine to talk to an FBI agent – without a lawyer present. Then they threw the book at her with all the usual shite referred to above. The FBI tracked her down when one of her co-workers informed on her.
But of course! Where would the American Stasi be without snitches?
There are so many snitches that the system is being overwhelmed. NBC News reported Wednesday that “aided by citizen sleuths who keep identifying Jan. 6 rioters, the Justice Department is finding that it has more cases than lawyers to prosecute them.” Accordingly, “the Justice Department is asking Congress for additional funds to prosecute those cases — a list that keeps growing.” It’s growing because “multiple online sleuths in a network of ‘Sedition Hunters’ working’ to find Jan. 6 participants have told NBC News that they’ve successfully identified to the FBI hundreds of additional Jan. 6 rioters.
When rumours spread in 2021 that there was going to be a J6 support rally in Washington D.C. on September 18, things got spicy and all the usual suspects, Democrat and GOP alike, shat themselves, and the FBI got so excited that they did what they’d done on January 6: they sent in their undercover teams to an event – which only generated this classic photo that has been memed to death on the Interwebby ever since (check the link just for the early ones), plus popularising the term “glowie”*
Government issued Ray-Ban’s… √
Squared away haircuts…. √
Black socks…. √
Govt approved wristwatches… √
Inability to blend in, and look totally stupid…. √
It was such overkill that the Capitol Police and the Feds got their wires crossed and surrounded, checked, and then “arrested” an FBI undercover agent. The following video of this is a hoot: check his gold badge out at 33s, plus the Robocop’s question, “Are ya undercover?” – which the agent denies of course.
* A “glowie” is either a federal agent or CIA agent, and sometimes said to be so obviously such that he glows.
The Feds could not have made it more clear that half the population that votes Republican is an enemy of the state: the bad guy in other words.
There is a moment in nearly all post-9/11 thrillers that anyone of a certain generation will be familiar with. It’s the point in the third act of a TV series like 24 or Homeland, or the last mission of video game franchises like Call of Duty,where the whole conspiracy has finally unraveled and the true villain is revealed. And he (it is always a he) turns out to be not an Arab jihadist, or a Russian ultranationalist, but a self-styled American patriot.
I don’t know if the USA can survive that but if it does it will only happen when the FBI is defunded. But perhaps the DOJ should be as well.
I sincerely hope that Trump, if he wins the 2024 election, pardons every single J6 protestor who has been convicted. I also sincerely hope that he tears apart the FBI, ATF and DOJ – but he’ll probably just get funding to build them new beautiful buildings instead.
The best reporter on January 6 has been Julie Kelly, whose stories can be found here and here.
No Minister 
Good on you for writing about this
Thanks. As I said in part 1, very few people give a shit about this, which is both good and bad.
But I regard it as a frightening development in the USA. There have been periods in the American past where you could look at civil liberties getting screwed over – starting with slavery, but appearing again during the Civil War, the late 19th century union fights, WWI under Democrat President Wilson, The Japanese Internments under FDR and of course the Southern states treatment of Blacks from about 1870 to the late 1960’s.
And each time the US came back, corrected, and sometimes even provided restitution to the victims, along with a sense of shame and embarrassment from the majority of the American people.
Maybe that’ll happen again here, but it really does feel different to most of those other events because of the polarisation of the population, which I think is now greater than at any time since before the Civil War, in the sense that we have two peoples who increasingly want to live in two different USA’s.
The inspiration for Ardern’s Stasi snitches in NZ during Covid Lockdowns
The inspiration of two tier policing in NZ – see Posie Parker rally, see parliamentary protest
What concerns me is many NZer’s would go along with the more extreme USA style political strikes on opponents in a heartbeat. Mad Millsy over at the Standard and TDB would be right up front trying to get lynching’s going…
So sad to see everything falling in to a left wing pit. Do people not watch documentaries on the gulags? Do they not read up on the horrors of authoritarian regimes?
Some do – and some approve….
TBF he’s so insane that other Lefties in both places have accused him of being a Right-Wing plant, which is laughable to anybody who has seen his antics on blogs, including Kiwiblog, over the last 15 years or more.
But yeah, he’d support it, all while screeching about lynchings in the American South, the 1951 waterfront strike and National here, McCarthy, etc, etc…
Tom it has been interesting to read this.
For me I think the state has badly over-reacted in fury at what it perceives as an unforgivable attack, so it has knee jerked into abuses of judicial power delivering over the top sentences.
From what you’ve written it sounds like the ghost of Judge Jeffreys is sitting on the benches.
However, I also cannot accept that the events of that day were all peaceful with people just strolling around the buildings either. That to me would be the same as Chloe Swarbrick talking about all of the “love” being shown at the Posie Parker rally. While there were people just swept up with it, there were others there that did do harm.
Neither will I accept that Donald Trump in his petulance at losing the election did not play his part in inflaming events. Is he guilty of some type of insurrection? No. Did he enrage the mob in a manner that would have made a Roman Tribune of the Plebs proud? Yes.
I think all in all it was a dark day in US politics, where a lot of people who were genuinely upset were manipulated into acting in a way that most of them would probably never have considered.
And if anything things are even worse now. Even more divided. So I can well imagine after the next election these same events unfolding.
I do give a shit because as I’ve said before I love the USA, and I worry about its future. But a nation that can face something as dark as their civil war and come through also gives me hope.
YMMV
I agree and have no problem with people who smashed stuff and assaulted police getting convicted.
Where I differ from you (perhaps) is the outrageously different treatment handed out to such people compared to others like them in the past in the Capitol Building and surrounding areas, plus the radically different treatment of the majority that were actually peaceful. And it’s still going on when you look at the huge numbers of dropped charges for the likes of the Hamas protestors.
I don’t know if it would be a good or bad thing for a future GOP administration to treat the next group of Left-wing protestors invading the building during some heated debates, controversial nominations, especially of Supreme Court Justices, with the same hardline approach, meaning the same charges.
On the one hand it might just rock these people back on their heels with the knowledge that it can be done to them too and they should not try it again.
On the other hand could just inflame the situation.
Agree also, though nothing I think that can rise to formal charges, let alone convictions. But it’s Trump running his fucking mouth as usual with careless language, as he does on many issues.
Where I differ from you (perhaps)
No you and I are in agreement that this difference in sentences handed out is outrageous. I am not at all trying to defend the obvious double standards at play, and who they have chosen to prosecute seems baffling to me.
As for Trump, I think he imagines as times that he is still on The Apprentice and has yet to get it through his head that words have consequences.
I do have a question though. From what you have written is it the case that the SCOTUS is then striking down a number of these cases?
That was in part 1, with more detailed description in a January 2024 post before SCOTUS made their decision, and what they did was strike down a specific set of charges applied to about 300 of the J6’s where I said:
The prosecutors undoubtedly thought they were being clever by stretching a law applying to corporate fraud [Sarbanes Oxley & Enron] to cover the Electoral College count as an “offical proceeding”. I held that it was likely SCOTUS would boot these charges for a variety of reasons, including the “vagueness doctrine”, but also because it obviously was being twisted in a partisan bad-faith way by anti-Trump, pro Democrat prosecutors in the DOJ, not just to obtain convictions but to gain sentences rarely seen outside of murders or acts of terrorism.
But almost all of those people would still, at a minimum, be facing charges around trespassing (“Entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds without lawful authority.”)
Which normally wouldn’t mean shit and hasn’t in the past for such protestors, with the charges either dropped or just a fine levied. I don’t know if “terrorism enhancements” can be applied to such frippery.
Ah Ok, yes I did read that.
And never put it past a DA to try it on in terms of adding to the charges if they think it’ll help them get re-elected (as we saw with Alec Baldwin). What do they care if they ruin peoples lives, it’s not their money being spent having to defend themselves. As long as they get their moment on the Rostra that’s all that matters.