MAGA Q Loon Called For Martial Law, Exhorted Militants To 'Make Those People Feel It Inside' Congress
And they did.
“If we make the people inside that building sweat and they understand that they may not be able to walk in the streets any longer if they do the wrong thing, then maybe they’ll do the right thing,” former Roger Stone ratfucking aide Jason Sullivan told a group of Trump supporters on December 30, 2020. “We have to put that pressure there.”
“There has to be a multiple-front strategy, and that multiple-front strategy, I do think, is descend on the Capitol, without question,” he said. “Make those people feel it inside.”
Which does sound a wee smidge incite-y, although don't get too excited since calling for protestors to "descend on Congress" seven days hence clearly fails the "imminence" test from Brandenberg v. Ohio, which refers to "imminent lawless action."
The New York Times put out one of the weirder riot origin stories yesterday with a recording of Sullivan, who exhorted Trump supporters on a conference call to intimidate members of Congress and let them “understand that people are breathing down their necks.” He also vowed that Trump would impose “a limited form of martial law” to maintain his hold on power.
“I don’t see any other way around it, because he’s not going to allow an election fraud to take place,” Sullivan continued.
“Biden will never be in that White House,” Sullivan went on. “That’s my promise to each and every one of you.”
On a bizarre website fusing "The Wizard of Oz" imagery and QAnon tropes, the self-described "Wizard of Twitter" claims to have "developed and deployed a proprietary social media listening and execution software technology during the Trump 2016 Presidential Campaign. This game-changing software helped drive the narrative by design in a meaningful, significant way that helped tip the scales in candidate Trump’s favor… at the last moment." And that's no mean feat when your account has been suspended for violating Twitter's terms of service.
Which is weird enough, but not as weird as how the call itself came to be recorded. According to the Times, law student Staci Burk, a Republican activist from Arizona, "became convinced that phony ballots had been flown in bulk into Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport."
We have questions.
She then swore out an anonymous affidavit for use in Sidney Powell's Arizona Kraken lawsuit.
More questions.
After which her house was occupied by members of the 1st Amendment Praetorian, a rightwing militia group made up mostly of Special Forces veterans and former intelligence officers which supported Michael Flynn's plan to impose martial law and seize the voting machines after the election.
Wait, what?
After becoming involved with Ms. Powell, Ms. Burk said she had been approached by several members of a right-wing paramilitary group, the 1st Amendment Praetorian, which was associated with a former legal client of Ms. Powell’s, Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser.
Ms. Burk said that members of the group then placed her under unwanted surveillance, insisting on moving into her home in what they described as an effort to protect her from people who might want to retaliate against her for coming forward about voter fraud.
It was a member of the 1st Amendment Praetorian, Ms. Burk said, who had joined the conference call that featured Mr. Sullivan. Ms. Burk said she recorded the call, much like she recorded other activities by the 1st Amendment Praetorian, because she felt threatened and unsafe by the group’s presence in her home.
Seems like Staci's "My house is being occupied by militants" shirt has people asking questions that were already answered by her anonymous affidavit shirt.
Anyway! Sullivan claims he was asked to participate in the call by a group of “health freedom advocate moms” — that's anti-vaxx loons to you and me — and that he simply "shared some encouragement” with his coup-curious fellow travelers.
“I only promoted peaceful solutions where Americans could raise their voices and be heard as expressed in our First Amendment,” he told the Times. “I in no way condone the violence of any protesters.”
Which may or may not be true, but his statement certainly raises quite a few questions which ought to be of interest to the Justice Department.
[NYT]
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Fox News Still Tingling At Prospect Of Elon Musk Breaking Twitter
They will never stop fornicating with that poultry.
Last week Elon Musk announced that he'd plunked down a couple billion dollars for a 9.2 percent stake in Twitter. You know, as one does when one is an eccentric billionaire whose net worth is more than that of Goldman Sachs, living in a country with preposterously unfair tax laws that allow such a thing to happen.
In short order, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced that Musk would be joining the board of directors.
He\u2019s both a passionate believer and intense critic of the service which is exactly what we need on @Twitter, and in the boardroom, to make us stronger in the long-term. Welcome Elon!— Parag Agrawal (@Parag Agrawal) 1649161971
As if to pre-empt the haters who might point out that having a notoriously erratic guy who can afford to tank the company's stock in the boardroom might present some, uh, challenges, Agrawal's predecessor Jack Dorsey chimed in: "I’m really happy Elon is joining the Twitter board! He cares deeply about our world and Twitter’s role in it. Parag and Elon both lead with their hearts, and they will be an incredible team."
Musk rewarded their enthusiasm by wondering out loud for his 81 million followers if Twitter was "dying" because Barack Obama and Justin Bieber don't tweet enough, or something. This proved that if there's anyone on earth who can simultaneously piss into and out of a tent, it's this guy.
Meanwhile, conservatives experienced a collective tingle in their Down Theres at the thought that Musk, with his complete misunderstanding of the First Amendment, might use his influence to bring back Donald Trump and allow the horse paste enthusiasts and Q loons to run rampant on the site again.
Fox's Brian Kilmeade wanked out this article bemoaning the "busted apart" compact between mainstream media and Real Amurika, so broken apparently because no one covers Hunter Biden's laptop, or something.
Musk has hinted at shaking up the social media industry before, and now he has that platform and he's in control — he's on the board, and he is the biggest shareholder. We know social media goes out of its way to block the truth that they don't like or they think might be not worth us knowing — that's their decision. Freeing up mainstream sources to totally ignore it as well. They were tight. They were one. So can Musk be the reality check the media needs to cover things more fairly? Could they lead Twitter and then force the other big tech outlets to follow his lead? Piecing back together that trust that was blasted apart over the last few years? My fingers are crossed. The answer is yes.
Sadly, it was not meant to be. Late last night Agrawal tweeted that Musk would not be joining the board after all.
Elon has decided not to join our board. I sent a brief note to the company, sharing with you all here.pic.twitter.com/lfrXACavvk— Parag Agrawal (@Parag Agrawal) 1649646833
We are not a financial or tech reporter, and we will leave it to others to speculate whether this means that Musk intends to attempt a hostile takeover of the company. But as a lawyer, we would note that "having Elon as a fiduciary of the company, where he, like all board members, has to act in the best interests of the company and all our shareholders" would certainly have been "the best path forward" for Twitter. As a fiduciary, he'd have had to quit disparaging the company publicly and stop doing crazy shit to depress the stock price. And as a board member, he'd have been capped at owning no more than 14.9 percent of the company's stock.
Who the hell knows what comes next for Musk and Twitter. But thanks to Crooks and Liars, we know what comes next for the wingnut loons who thought Musk was going to turn asylum over to the inmates, and it is whiiiiiiiiiiiine.
"If this is the public square, let it be the public square!" shouted Charles Payne. (It is not the public square, it's a private company.)
Meanwhile, Brian Kilmeade is still spanking that monkey: "I think Elon is gonna walk into work one day and he is going to say 'I'm going to start using my power. I bought more of it, Donald Trump is back on the line. I'm going to put all these people back on. And maybe I'll let everybody understand it's going to be a lot looser when the so-called freedom of speech suspensions happen," Kilmeade opined.
"They made a decision to suppress conservative thought at every turn, and it's gonna cost them," he ranted about the non-existent shadow-banning of conservatives.
Then Ainsley Earhardt, who is actually a real person, chimed in that she hopes Musk buys more Twitter stock so conservatives can get back on and make the site more positive like Instagram and TikTok.
"You go on Twitter and it's negative, a lot of it's hate," tut-tutted the woman who shares a network with Tucker Carlson and is rumored to be in a romantic relationship with Sean Hannity.
"He's gonna do something, stay tuned," Steve Doocy ended the segment. And perhaps he is. Or perhaps Elon Musk will wander off and break something else.
This is no way to run a country, but here we are.
OPEN THREAD.
[Fox / Crooks and Liars]
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Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg Pinky Swears Trump Investigation Isn't Imploding Like A Trump Hotel
Pay no attention to the one million leaks coming out of his office that say otherwise.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is very hot for you to know that he is not dropping the ball on the Trump investigation.
Sure, the two outside lawyers brought in to lead the inquiry resigned, with white collar legend Mark Pomerantz writing that he "harbors no doubt about whether [Trump] committed crimes — he did," and yet "the investigation has been suspended indefinitely." And according to the Washington Post, the grand jury convened to hear evidence in the matter has been inactive and is scheduled to be disbanded this month.
Plus half the office appears to be DM-ing Daily Beast reporters Jose Pagliery and Asawin Suebsaeng to say that the inquiry has been "gutted," with lead investigator Solomon Shinerock spending less and less time on the case. In fact, the Beast has been reporting so relentlessly on the implosion of the Trump case that Pagliery and Suebsaeng appear to have been deliberately snubbed yesterday when Bragg called every reporter in New York but them to insist that he is definitely, 100 percent absolutely not punting on the Trump investigation.
For days, The Daily Beast had been pressing spokespeople in the Manhattan DA’s office for comment, sharing with them specific details of this reporting. A spokesperson for the office had repeatedly refused opportunities to go on the record to deny or challenge any of the details.
But Thursday afternoon, hours after being informed of The Daily Beast’s final deadline, the office blasted out a written statement, attributed to Bragg, to a variety of national media outlets, insisting that “the team working on this investigation is comprised of [sic] dedicated, experienced career prosecutors,” who are still “investigating thoroughly and following the facts without fear or favor.”
The Daily Beast did not receive this statement, and the DA’s office has continued to decline chances to go on the record to explain how their claims square with this reporting showing how another lead investigator on the case has had his role significantly curtailed.
LOL, subtle.
Bragg sat down for an hour with the Times, whom he assured that his office had recently interviewed new witnesses. He also vowed to publicly announce his decision whether or not to prosecute Trump.
“My determination was that the investigation needed to be ongoing, and that continues to be my determination,” he told the Post.
"We are every day following up on new evidence that we've secured," he pledged to CNN. "Investigations are not linear so we are following the leads in front of us. That's what we're doing. ... The investigation is very much ongoing."
Much of his effort appears to be directed to assuring the public that whatever he decides will be the right decision.
“I know challenging cases and I’m bringing the rigor that I brought to those here," he promised the Times.
“As anyone who has worked on criminal cases in New York knows, New York County has grand juries sitting all the time,” Bragg told the Post, insisting that it was no big deal that the grand jury empaneled to hear evidence in the Trump case is disbanding. “There is no magic at all to any previously reported dates.”
And with CNN he brought up his work under former acting New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood to prosecute Trump's family foundation: "When I was at the Attorney General's office as chief deputy overseeing the entire office, I led the team that brought the successful litigation against the former president and the Trump Foundation. So I do what's put before me. That's what I've done as a career prosecutor, follow the facts and we'll go where they take us and that's what we're doing each and every day in the office."
So, clearly everything is proceeding apace, nothing to see here, and those prosecutors just noped out to go spend more time on their golf swings. Or, you know, could be the opposite of that. (For the record, our money's on option two.)
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Police Seized $8,040 From Non-Criminal Woman And Now She Can't Get It Back
Civil asset forfeiture is messed up.
Here in the United States of America, one cannot be sent to prison for a crime unless they plead guilty or a jury of their peers finds them guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Now, we all know that this doesn't always work out so well, but it's at least the general goal.
Also here in the United States of America, the police can take your money or your stuff and not give it back to you even if you are neither convicted of nor even charged with a crime.
In the case of Cristal Starling, police in Rochester, New York, raided her home in 2020 because they suspected that her boyfriend at the time was selling drugs. Though they didn't find drugs, they did find the $8,040 in cash Ms. Starling had saved up from running a mobile food cart to buy a food truck, so they just took that and her personal and work vehicles instead.
While the police did find drugs at the then-boyfriend's mother's home, he was acquitted at trial. Cristal Starling got her two vehicles back, but she did not get that money. Rather, it was sent to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) for civil forfeiture, for a program called "equitable sharing." This is the very inequitable program in which the police steal your money and then divvy it up between themselves and federal law enforcement.
The DEA contacted Ms. Starling, informing her of the steps she needed to take to contest the forfeiture, and she took them. She was not, however, told that there was a competing action in federal court to keep her money, and she ended up missing the deadline to contest that one.
Gary Craig at the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reports:
"After trial I tried to get my money back," she said. "They sent me through this whole process of trying to get it through the courts and I still did not get it."
Court papers show that federal prosecutors maintained that Starling missed deadlines for the administrative filing of claims for the return of the seized money, and that her claim was first made three months after a default awarded the money to the government. Starling said she was on vacation, and records supported this claim, at a time when the government said it gave "direct notice."
A federal judge upheld the decision by authorities to keep Starling's money, which is typically then divided among police agencies.
How fabulously convenient for them.
Cristal Starling, however, is not giving up. She's currently being represented in her case by the non-profit law firm Institute of Justice, which has represented other victims of civil forfeiture across the nation, including "a case in Nevada where police took a Marine veteran’s life savings without charging him with a crime, and a class action lawsuit challenging an Indiana law that allows private attorneys to profit off prosecuting civil forfeiture cases."
The system is designed to make it more expensive to get one's money back than to just let law enforcement have it, the law firm explains.
The process for challenging a forfeiture is an incredibly convoluted one and includes various steps along the way where defendants risk losing their money forever, especially without professional legal help. Winning, on the other hand, requires a series of perfect decisions that take a long time. Because the amounts seized tend to be small, it’s often cost-prohibitive for individuals to hire attorneys and fight to get their money back. For example, Cristal was told that she could hire an attorney for $5,000, which is more than half the total that was seized from her.
There are over 400 federal statutes on the books that allow law enforcement to take the money and possessions of not only those they accuse of crimes, but also people who have done absolutely nothing illegal themselves. One especially popular method is one in which police pull people over for minor traffic infractions, perform warrantless searches of their vehicle, and take any cash they find. In 2014, The Washington Post documented 400 of these traffic stops in 17 states, none of which led to an actual arrest.
READ MORE: Civil Forfeiture: South Carolina Not *Quite* Done Stealing From Black People
In cases where people are actually convicted of crimes, white collar crimes in particular, civil forfeiture is a way of providing restitution to victims. That's entirely reasonable. Where it becomes unreasonable and, in fact, quite unfathomable, is when the government seizes the assets of those found innocent, or worse, those who were never charged or even accused of any crime whatsoever. This is the case with over 80 percent of these seizures.
Why does this happen? Well, in our criminal justice system, the prosecution must prove that a person is "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." In civil forfeiture, it's not the person who is charged, but the thing that law enforcement seized, and it is up to the owner to prove that the inanimate object is innocent. This results in fun case names like United States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins or Texas v. One Gold Crucifix, a case in which "[t]he police had confiscated a simple gold cross that a woman wore around her neck after pulling her over for a minor traffic violation. No contraband was reported, no criminal charges were filed, and no traffic ticket was issued."
Those who support civil asset forfeiture say that it is a necessary tool to help fight crime and "The War on Drugs," and make sure that crime doesn't pay, and that "equitable sharing" promotes cooperation between state and federal law enforcement, as both want to get their hands on that money. This, however, can be accomplished in a non-sociopathic way, by keeping to criminal forfeiture only and requiring a conviction to seize any assets. The Department of Justice argues that "civil forfeiture is an essential tool when the government seeks to forfeit the property of fugitives, defendants who have died, or where it can prove that the property was involved in a crime, but cannot prove who the wrongdoer was."
If that were anywhere near the majority of these cases, that might be reasonable. However, in cases like Ms. Starling's, where police are stealing money that they can in no way prove had anything at all to do with any crime whatsoever, it's pretty clear that it is not.
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