There Goes Another Idiot

A federal judge on Tuesday convicted a Pennsylvania restaurant owner of storming the U.S. Capitol, where she screamed at police officers to bring out then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi so the pro-Trump mob could hang her.

U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden decided the case against Pauline Bauer after hearing testimony without a jury. The judge convicted her of all five counts in her indictment, including a felony charge that she obstructed the Jan. 6, 2021, joint session of Congress for certifying President Joe Biden’s electoral victory, court records show.

Apparently she's one of those "sovereign citizens" morons and she defended herself. She adequately proved the old saying that anyone who acts as their own attorney has an idiot for a client.

Back to jail, asshole.

Let the Hand-Wringing Begin; Dead Perp Ed.

A customer at Ranchito Taqueria shot and killed a man who robbed the restaurant in southwest Houston late Thursday night, according to the Houston Police Department.

It happened just before 11:30 p.m. Thursday at the restaurant on S. Gessner near Bellaire Boulevard.

Houston police said the armed man in a mask came inside the restaurant, demanding money and wallets from customers. However, as he was leaving, one of those customers shot the suspect.

The customer left, likely because he discovered that the perp's gun was fake (BB gun or Airsoft). Which, of course, he had no way of knowing at the time.

Bet that there will be stories about how the Dead Perp was on the cusp of turning his life around and wanted to do the robbery to get some money for his mother before he entered the seminary.

He Found Out

The son of a renowned American painter was convicted Friday of four counts of participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.

Vincent Gillespie, 61, of Athol, Massachusetts, was found guilty of assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers; civil disorder; engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds; and an act of physical violence in the Capitol grounds or buildings, prosecutors said.

I really don't get why these clowns keep going to trial on these charges. They don't persuade juries that they were innocent tourists looking for a good time.

This particular loon's likely to go away for a few years.

Filling Up the Prisons With These Clowns

An Iowa construction worker and QAnon follower was sentenced Friday to five years in prison for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, when he led a crowd chasing a police officer who diverted rioters away from lawmakers.

Wearing a T-shirt celebrating the conspiracy theory with his arms spread, Douglas Jensen became part of one of the most memorable images from the riot.

As he handed down the sentence, Judge Timothy Kelly said he wasn’t sure Jensen understood the seriousness of a violent attack in which he played a “big role.”

“It snapped our previously unbroken tradition of peaceful transfer of power. We can’t get that back,” Kelly said. “I wish I could say I had evidence you understood this cannot be repeated.”

Or, as the kids say, he fucked around and found out.

These clowns who are taking their cases to trial are getting hammered. Their success rate at trial is zero. I'll bet that if he had owned up to what he had done, he'd have gotten less than half of that sentence.

Way to Go, Dershowitz

He got sanctioned for being one of the three attorney filing a bullshit case, filled with baseless allegations of electoral fraud. The three, and their clients, have to pay the attorney's fees of the parties who had to defend against their MyPillowish conspiratorical insanity.

I'd expect complaints to state bar associations' ethics cops to follow.

Goombye, Stewie

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes was convicted Tuesday of seditious conspiracy for a violent plot to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential win, handing the Justice Department a major victory in its massive prosecution of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

It wasn't a complete win for the Feds, as not all defendants were convicted of all of the charges. But they all were convicted of something. The ones they were convicted of can put then away until the 2040s, if so sentenced.

Just another sad entry in the "Fucked Around and Found Out" file.

Guilty!

The 19-year-old white man accused of fatally shooting 10 Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, pleaded guilty Monday morning to more than two dozen related state charges. https://t.co/rNQD1LSzPL

— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) November 28, 2022

One more lifetime resident in the NYS penal system.

He'll Probably Get All the Sex He Wants in Prison

A 22-year-old faces life in prison after he pleaded guilty to plotting a mass shooting to “slaughter” women at an Ohio university, according to U.S. Attorney Kenneth L. Parker.

Tres Genco, 22, of Hillsboro, Ohio, has been in custody since his arrest in July of 2021, Parker explained Tuesday.

Genco is a self-identified “Incel or involuntary celibate,” the U.S. attorney said.
...
When he first began posting on the Incel websites, Genco attended Army Basic Training in Georgia. He was discharged for entry-level performance and conduct in December 2019.

A month after being discharged, Genco conducted surveillance at an Ohio university on Jan. 15, 2020.

The same day, Parker said, Genco allegedly searched online for topics including “planning a shooting crime” and “when does preparing for a crime become an attempt?”

During the investigation, Genco’s manifesto was found which claimed he would kill women “out of hatred, jealousy and revenge.”

Yet another spoiled white guy who thinks that women should want to fuck him because he's a white guy. None of these jerkoffs are willing to do the work to meet people, to get to know them, to make friends. They're more inteersted in sitting in their mother's basements and consuming hatred and emitting rage online.

Well, he's probably going to get the chance to make lots of friends on his cellblock.

The Wheels Keep Grinding

An American army reservist who was openly antisemitic, was an avowed antisemite and wore a moustache styled after Adolf Hitler was given a four-year prison sentence on Thursday after being found guilty of helping attack the US Capitol on January 6 2021.

Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, 32, received his punishment at Washington DC’s federal courthouse about four months after a jury found him guilty of obstructing the congressional session held on the day of the Capitol siege to certify Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

Jurors also convicted him of a series of misdemeanors, including breaking into a restricted federal building as well as disorderly and disruptive conduct, and at sentencing the judge presiding over his case determined that he obstructed justice during his trial by lying under oath, US justice department prosecutors said in a statement.

Enjoy the fruits of your assholery, bub.

Convicting the Loudmouths

A jury on Tuesday convicted two men of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, delivering swift verdicts in a plot that was broken up by the FBI and described as a rallying cry for a U.S. civil war by anti-government extremists.

One might remember back, then Chimpy's internal war on loudmouth Muslims was in full swing, the FBI had a practice of finding local loudmouths, egging them on, then charging them with terrorism for doing things that they arguably wouldn't have done without an FBI agent provocateur pretty much arranging the whole thing. It's what they do.

The counter-argument is that these guys are grown men who should have had the sense to rethink that they were doing instead of acting like a couple of lemmings. (Remember your mother would ask "if your friends jumped off a cliff, would you follow them?")

What the FBI does should always be judged by the facts of any particular case. They are not to be trusted, due to their record of fuckery, big-footing local cases, and inflationary self-importance going back ninety years.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It's Off to Jail You Go, Stevie

A US jury has found Donald Trump's former strategist Steve Bannon guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress.

Bannon, 68, was indicted last year over his refusal to co-operate with the congressional committee probing the events leading up to the Capitol riot.

The former White House chief strategist is said to have been an unofficial adviser to Mr Trump at the time of the insurrection on 6 January 2021.

He faces up to two years in jail and up to $200,000 (£167,000) in fines.

The cell doors can't slam shut on his ass soon enough.

They Got the White People's Terrorism Discount

A federal judge in Minneapolis on Wednesday sentenced another member of a far-right extremist group to prison on terrorism charges.

[Asswipe #1] 24, of Hampstead, got on the FBI's radar after he and [Aswipe 32], 32, of New Brighton, Minnesota, showed up with guns at protests in Minneapolis two years ago that followed the police murder of George Floyd.

[Both asswipes] were part of the Boogaloo Bois, a loose-knit organization that hopes to foment civil war in the U.S.

The men each pleaded guilty to supporting a foreign terrorist organization after trying to sell weapons to an FBI informant posing as a member of Hamas.

U.S. District Judge Michael Davis sentenced [#1] to four years in prison. The sentence is a year more than he gave [#2] in March. But Davis said he'd consider reducing [#1]'s sentence to three years if he follows through on his agreement to cooperate with prosecutors.

Noting that the 48-month term is far less than other terrorism defendants he sentenced in recent years, Davis told [#1] that he got "one heck of a break."

No fucking shit. Back when the diligient agents at Fart, Barf and Itch were sweeping up mouthy young Muslim men, they were getting sent them away for ten to thirty years. But these guys get a much shorter sentence for essentially the same crimes.

You are free to speculate on reasons other than the obvious.

Meanwhile, the Wheels of Justice Keep Grinding the Insurrectionists

A federal jury on Monday convicted a New York Police Department veteran of assaulting an officer during the U.S. Capitol riot, rejecting his claim that he was defending himself when he tackled the officer and grabbed his gas mask.

Thomas Webster, a 20-year NYPD veteran, was the first Capitol riot defendant to be tried on an assault charge and the first to present a jury with a self-defense argument.

Jurors deliberated for less than three hours before they convicted Webster of all six counts in his indictment, including a charge that he assaulted Metropolitan Police Department officer Noah Rathbun with a dangerous weapon, a metal flagpole.
...
Two jurors who spoke to reporters after the verdict said videos capturing the officer’s assault from multiple angles were crucial evidence rebutting Webster’s self-defense argument.

Ah, the old argument of "who you gonna believe, me or your eyes" fails again.

Seditionist News

The first asshole from the 1/6/21 insurrection who opted to take the matter to trial was convicted. The jury was out for all of three hours. This was the guy, you may recall, that, when his kids told him that he had broken the law, threatened to kill them if they ratted him out.

One of the leaders of the Proud Boys has been arrested on conspiracy charges for the Insurrection. This particular asswipe was out on bail at the time and violated his bail conditions, which will probably net him a few charges just for that.

The Feds aren't done arresting people, either.

Seditionist News

An Alabama man affiliated with the far-right Oath Keepers militia group pleaded guilty Wednesday to seditious conspiracy for his actions leading up and through the Jan. 6 riot, marking the first person involved in the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol to be convicted of the rarely used charge.

The sentencing guideline range for Joshua A. James, who also pleaded guilty to a charge of obstruction of an official proceeding, was estimated to be 7¼ to nine years in prison.

The 34-year-old from Arab, Alabama, acknowledged getting into a physical altercation with a police officer while inside the Capitol and participating in a plan to use force to hinder or delay the transfer of presidential power. James also agreed to cooperate with authorities investigating the riot, including testifying before a grand jury.

That's one of the cardinal principles of busting a conspiracy: The first guy to flip gets the best deal.

Meanwhile, the January 6th Committee filed court papers saying that there is probable cause to conclude that the Führer of Mar-a-Lardo committed crimes. Which, of course, won't dent the armor of the Trumpanzees. It's really difficult to persuade people that they've bought into a cult of personality.

Affluenza in CT

So... defendant illegally records minors in intimate situations. Pleads guilty and the court agrees to seal the records. And she may serve only ninety days?

Yep, affluenza is alive and well in Greenwich, CT. You can bet your ass that if she was some room-temperature-IQ cracker living in a trailer park and every other fact of the case was the same, she'd be doing a decade or more in prison and the court records would be open to the public.

There Goeth Another Member of the Christian Taliban

Former reality TV star Josh Duggar was immediately taken into custody Thursday after a federal jury convicted him of downloading and possessing child pornography.

The jury in Fayetteville, about 140 miles (225 kilometers) northwest of Little Rock, found the 33-year-old Duggar guilty on one count each of receiving and possessing child pornography. He faces up to 20 years in prison and fines of up to $250,000 for each count when he’s sentenced.
...
Duggar and his large Arkansas family starred on TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting” until the network canceled the show in 2015 following revelations that he had molested four of his sisters and a babysitter. Authorities began investigating the abuse in 2006 after receiving a tip from a family friend but concluded that the statute of limitations on any possible charges had expired.

Duggar’s parents said he had confessed to the fondling and apologized. At the time, Duggar apologized publicly for unspecified behavior and resigned as a lobbyist for the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group.

All of the conspiracy theory bullshit about liberal child porno rings and it's very interesting that the vast majority of the notable people who get caught up in child port and child abuse seem to be members of the Christian Taliban and the Party of Trump.

Right, "Gym-bo"?

Can a Lawyer Defend a Racist Piece of Shit Without Being a Racist Piece of Shit?

Defense attorney Kevin Gough called the murder trial of Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed Black jogger, a "public lynching" of his client -- who is one of three white men accused of chasing and killing Arbery.

He claimed that the trial has been "infected by mob violence by the woke-left mob," and asked the judge for a mistrial once again. His request was denied by the judge.

"Third parties are influencing this case," Gough said, referring to the "spectator activity" and "media frenzy" concerning public figures attending the trial and gathering outside of the courtroom. "This is what a public lynching looks like in the 21st century."

First off, no white lawyer who is defending a white client who is accused of killing a Black man should ever use the word "lynching". His client was duly convicted by a jury that he tried his level best to make as white as possible. There was no mob storming the courthouse to hang his client from a lamppost. The South has a dark history of lynching people, mostly Black, a few Jews, and for a white lawyer to say that his white Christian client was "lynched" is tone-deaf at best and is really racist as all fuck.

Second, show me the "mob violence". Brunswick, Georgia wasn't looted. No building were burnt. Nobody, other than Mr. Arberyy, was killed.

Third, "media frenzy"? Really? It was a high-profile trial. What the fuck did he expect? It's not the media's fault that Mr. Gough came across as though he spends his weekends ironing his white robes.

Fourth, "spectator activity"? Gough doesn't know that trials are public? My recollection is that there's been some rather high-level court cases about that. I guess he's never heard of a trial of a cop-killer, where off-duty cops pack the gallery. Or trials of cops, where off-duty cops pack the gallery. People are welcome to attend, as long as they don't cause a disturbance.

All this smacks of a lawyer who can't come to grips with the fact that he lost the biggest high-profile case of his career and smeared himself on the pavement doing so.

GUILTY!

All three men charged in the death of Ahmaud Arbery were convicted of murder Wednesday.  

The jury reached its decision after more than 10 hours of deliberations following a trial in which prosecutors argued that the defendants provoked a confrontation with Arbery and defense attorneys said their clients were acting in self-defense.

  

I did not expect this verdict. I expected either an acquittal or a hung jury, especially given the defense's racially-charged juror selection and their use of the Scary Black Man Defense.

But the jury apparently didn't buy that shit. Apparently they agreed that there was no reasonable grounds to suspect a man in jogging clothes who was carrying nothing could be reasonably suspected of being a burglar.

Maybe things are changing. But as others have pointed out, the defendants' buddies in local law enforcement and in the prosecutor's office did try to sweep this murder under the rug. Only the video going public in this case (and in the murder of Laquan McDonald in Chicago) made prosecution a possibility.

“Let the word go forth all over the world that a jury of 11 Whites and one Black, in the Deep South, stood up in the courtroom and said that Black lives matter,” - Rev. Al Sharpton

Amen.

A Tiny Little Bit of Police Acccountability

A Jackson County judge found Kansas City [MO] police detective Eric DeValkenaere guilty of involuntary manslaughter and armed criminal action in the fatal shooting of 26-year-old Cameron Lamb, a Black man.
...
Jackson County prosecutors argued that DeValkenaere recklessly shot Cameron Lamb on Dec. 3, 2019, as Lamb was sitting in a pickup truck and backing into his garage at 41st Street and College Avenue.

The shooting occurred not long after a police helicopter spotted a red truck chasing a purple Mustang at speeds of up to 90 miles per hour through a residential neighborhood.

So, basically, a cop found a Black guy who was backing the same color pickup truck into his garage and shot him dead because reasons. The police department tried to hush it up, but this time, a prosecutor was having none of it.