Wednesday, September 15, 2021

Capitol Police Just Sued Trump Supporters In Goofiest Legal Case In Recent History



Last week, seven officers from the US Capitol Police force quietly filed one of the goofiest civil lawsuits in American history. The regime media reported on the Capitol Police’s 71-page filing in stoic, dignified tones. As is customary, every “journalist” got the same memo, declined to apply any critical examination, and simply took everything at face value. 

The New York Times went farther, affirmatively puffing up the Capitol Police’s lawsuit to give the impression Capitol Police officers were simply pursuing “a broad view of the [January 6] riot’s origins.” According to the Times, this is all just a perfectly normal “effort to hold former President Donald J. Trump accountable for the Capitol attack.”

Here was the NYT whitewash:

A group of seven Capitol Police officers filed a lawsuit on Thursday accusing former President Donald J. Trump and nearly 20 members of far-right extremist groups and political organizations of a plot to disrupt the peaceful transition of power during the Capitol riot on Jan. 6.

The suit, which implicated members of the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers militia and Trump associates like Roger J. Stone Jr., was arguably the most expansive civil effort to date seeking to hold Mr. Trump and his allies legally accountable for the storming of the Capitol.

While three other similar lawsuits were filed in recent months, the suit on Thursday was the first to allege that Mr. Trump worked in concert with both far-right extremists and political organizers promoting his baseless lies that the presidential election was marred by fraud.

“This is probably the most comprehensive account of Jan. 6 in terms of civil cases,” said Edward Caspar, a lawyer who is leading the suit for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “It spans from the former president to militants around him to his campaign supporters.”

While the new lawsuit appears to largely rely on news reports and details gleaned from criminal cases filed by the Justice Department, it takes a broad view of the origins of the attack. It argues that the conspiracy to disrupt the election started as early as May 2020, when Mr. Trump began complaining on social media that mail-in voting could “lead to massive fraud.” [NYT]

This case, Smith vs. Trump, bears little resemblance to the Regime media’s presentation. Nonetheless, it is still a rather important case to track because of its high stakes impact on the public narrative about January 6’s key players and ultimate origins.

This lawsuit is also worth tracking as the most perfectly grotesque Dorian-Gray-portrait of the decaying, fraying Globalist American Empire (GAE).  Here we see the Globalist American Empire’s few decent public leaders torn down by ravenous lawyers, its citizen groups incited and indicted by undercover secret police, and its critical race legal theories devouring the U.S. Constitution — yes, the Portrait of Dorian GAE has never been on more honest display than in the funhouse mirror of Smith vs. Trump.

It’s difficult to convey the sheer scale of the madness here without going line-by-line through the 71-page legal complaint. Fortunately, we already combed it, so you don’t have to.

So, without further ado, we have broken down the four most outrageous features of the Capitol Police lawsuit.

1. Cops As Completely Shameless Critical Race Theory Hacks.

Smith vs. Trump may be the very first critical race theory lawsuit filed by law enforcement officers, instead of against them.

There are 206 numbered paragraphs in the cops’ complaint. But the reader need only wait until paragraph 4 before being bombarded by long word-walls of SJW fantasy about white supremacy:

With this paragraph, the lawsuit already starts spinning sideways right out the gate.

First, note that the Capitol Cops base their case on the “disparate impact” legal theory, which Revolver has repeatedly identified as the doctrine that destroyed America:

Why can’t Oregon make reading or math a condition of graduating high school?
Why can’t San Francisco arrest people for shoplifting?
Why can’t high schools discipline disruptive students anymore?
Why can’t major universities use standardized testing anymore?
Why can’t people show an ID to prove who they are before they vote?

Every single time, the answer is the same: disparate impact, the doctrine that destroyed America.

Here, the Capitol Cops argue that because Trump alleged election fraud in places like Detroit, and Detroit has a larger than average black population, Trump’s claims had a “disparate impact” on black people. 

Just like that, Detroit gets a Get Out Of Fraud Free card. The underlying question of whether there was election fraud in Detroit becomes irrelevant, because simply calling for an investigation could disproportionately affect black people due to Detroit’s population. This theory would allow plaintiffs to crack open the civil rights extortion toolkit, and potentially even bankrupt election investigators with punitive legal damages.

This “disparate impact” approach to blocking any inquiry into election fraud does not stop at the Detroit city limits. The Capitol Cops assert that allegations of election fraud in Pittsburgh constitute a form of racialized incitement to violence. Of the Top 100 metro areas in the country, Pittsburgh actually has the lowest percentage of black people. But because its 23% black population is larger than the overall 13% national black share of the population, Pittsburgh gets a “disparate impact” Get Out Of Fraud Free card too. 

That’s the power of disparate impact legal reasoning. Even though Republicans never argued the fraud in Pittsburgh had anything to do with its tiny 23% black population, Democrat lawyers can structure their lawfare to give the whole city a civil rights Iron Dome that intercepts election investigations.

But the Capitol Cops don’t stop there. They go on to argue that because Trump’s election fraud claims were a manifestation of racialized white supremacy via the “disparate impact” method above, any Trump supporters who participated in the Stop The Steal protests against election fraud were themselves members of a racially-motivated mob. As such, any ordinary-course scuffles that tend to happen at large protests are treated — when involving Trump supporters — as akin to hate crimes under the D.C. Bias Related Crimes Act of 1989. Indeed, even the formation of the Stop The Steal protest movement itself is framed as a violation of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1985.


Got that? So if you thought it was a problem that in Detroit they put pizza boxes over the windows where the votes were counted, here are the new rules if the Capitol Cops win their case:

  • If you investigate the pizza box problem, you’re a white supremacist — and because you’re a white supremacist, you will probably also pay punitive damages.
  • If you organize a protest over the pizza box problem, you trigger the Ku Klux Klan Act;
  • If you promote a protest over the pizza box problem, and a Capitol Cop claims “emotional injuries”, you can effectively be tried for a hate crime in civil court.

So just sit there and stare at the pizza box. It’s not a problem. It’s just democracy. There, there


Are we exaggerating how extensive the impact of this lawsuit will be if the Capitol Cops win?

No, not really. The impact becomes clearer once we consider just how wide of a net the Capitol Cops are casting in this case.

2. The Capital Cops Are Suing 35 Defendants

Seven Capitol Cops are suing thirty five separate individuals and entities. While the regime media has talked about the case as akin to a class-action case, it’s really completely reversed.

In a typical class-action suit, many small and relatively disempowered plaintiffs all join forces to take on a large defendant together. Here, we have the opposite: a small number of politically protected plaintiffs are exploiting their celebrity and leverage to economically shake down a huge number of defendants.

The marquee defendants are influencers of public renown, such as Donald Trump, Roger Stone, Brandon Straka, and Ali Alexander.

But 10 of these defendants are random placeholder “John Does 1-10” reserved for unknown people who may have simply promoted lawful, nonviolent protests in DC on January 5-6 as part of the Stop The Steal rally. Still worse, the numerical majority of the named defendants are poor, powerless, or have nothing to do with whatever real or imagined injuries these Capitol Cops may have suffered.

For example, the Capitol Cops sued Thomas Caldwell. Caldwell is a 65 year old, fully-disabled man who has been debilitated by a spinal fracture for years, had no criminal history, and was wheelchair-bound in prison without his medicine. He never even went inside the building that day, and never assaulted an officer. 

So why is he being financially extorted into hiring defense lawyers to protect him from cops he never touched, in a building he never entered?

The answer is probably as simple as this: Caldwell was set up in January to be the Oath Keepers’ leadership fall guy, and now the plaintiff’s lawyers are just piggybacking on FBI propaganda. It was Caldwell whom the FBI ludicrously overhyped and then framed as the Oath Keeper’s “commander” on January 19, the day right before Joe Biden’s inauguration. 

The entire mainstream media amplified this outrageously false FBI propaganda hook, line and sinker:

But Caldwell was never the “commander” of the Oath Keepers. In fact, Caldwell was never even a member of the Oath Keepers. He just tagged along with a random transgender bar owner and a still unnamed, never-indicted, highly curious individual known only as “Person Three” for the days between January 4-6.

The actual founder and head of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, has still never been pursued by Federal investigators. The inexplicable protection of Rhodes at every level — including his apparent immunity even from ordinary course FBI search warrants for computer, laptop, alternate phone, back-up phone and tablet records — suggests the possibility of a pre-existing relationship with Federal authorities that Revolver has noted could blow the entire official narrative of January 6 event wide open.

3. The Capital Cops Use Kid Gloves On Stewart Rhodes

While Oathkeepers leader Rhodes is named as among the 35 defendants, the complaint appears to cherry-pick those allegations least likely to invite pursuit of highly sensitive matters.

For example, the lawsuit cites generic statements made by Rhodes in his various InfoWars appearances that preceded January 6, as well as his official OathKeepers.org “Call To Action,” benignly quoted as: “All Patriots who can get to DC need to be in DC. Now is the time to stand. It’s not too late to go. Jump on a plane! Jump in your car! Just get there.”

This is a lawsuit by U.S. Capitol Police officers. Rhodes is on camera suggesting he had an armed group of Oath Keeper-sympathizing police officers in DC during January 6:



If armed police officers are legally allowed to protest inside DC, then there is of course nothing wrong with them doing so. The strange thing, given the aggressiveness of the Capitol Police’s fishing expedition, is that they would be entirely uninterested in this remark by Rhodes. Does this neglect owe itself simply to incompetence or were the Capitol Police tipped off to give the as of yet unindicted Rhodes kid glove treatment?

And then there is the strange way the Capitol Cops exempt Rhodes from allegations of conspiring with the Proud Boys, despite the fact that the Oath Keepers organization and Rhodes’s lieutenants Thomas Caldwell and Kelly Meggs are each accused of doing so. This is a very odd omission of potential liability for Rhodes, given that Caldwell and Meggs were junior to Rhodes in the Oath Keepers organization, and even the Oath Keepers organization — of which Rhodes is the founder and national leader — is named as conspiring with the Proud Boys. See item f below:

4. Racial Identity Redux

While not exactly belonging to the “critical race theory” category discussed above, it is worth highlighting how far the Capitol Cops go out of their way to try to paint the defendants as racist.

In paragraph 61, the Capitol Cops cite the fact that Kamala Harris is a “woman of color” to shoehorn in the idea that those who organized and participated in Stop The Steal were animated by racial hatred for black women:

This is the sort of totally untethered racial “Just So” story we expect from over-medicated, under-educated students of gender studies — not from police officers.

It’s worth also noting that two of the seven Capitol Cops suing here are white. Which makes their hyper-racialized claims even more comical in some sections. For example, the lawsuit’s description of the “Proud Boys” is a cartoon caricature of what a totally clueless left-wing automaton given an intravenous drip of Ibram X. Kendi literature would think:

Whatever one thinks of the controversial Proud Boys group, the only thing one can say with certainty is this lawsuit’s description inhabits a galaxy about as far from Planet Reality as it can get. Before the Proud Boys original founder — comedian Gavin McInnes was banned from Twitter, this was his own Twitter biography:

And after McInnes stepped down, the group’s national leadership was turned over to Tarrio, a black Afro-Cuban.

But, according to the lying, disingenuous Capitol Cops, all violence must be contextualized as racialized violence so they can break open the piggy bank full of legal and punitive damages arising from “hate” and “bias”.

These are our cops in 2021, folks.

5. Simple Stupidity

The many egregious errors and omissions in the lawsuit evince a level of stupidity far beyond what we would have expected, even from Capitol Police officers used as political pawns.

For example, the Capitol Cops allege Oath Keepers defendant breached the Capitol on January 6:

But as discussed above, not even the FBI has found any evidence Caldwell breached the Capitol. So the Capitol Cops are just wrong. However, the Justice Department did initially charge Caldwell with going inside the Capitol, before finally admitting they were wrong.

The Capitol Cops’ lawyers appear to have based their complaint off the initial Justice Department accusations from January, and were simply too lazy or ignorant to read the rest of the court docket.

In another spot, to prove how culpable the Proud Boys were in their advance planning to start a riot, the Capitol Cops cite private Telegram messages from the group’s senior leadership channel discussing a plot to incite “normies”, to “burn that city to ash today” and to “smash some pigs to dust”: 

But Revolver covered this exact exchange in our bombshell report exploring the possibility of federal foreknowledge and involvement in 1/6. 

All of these statements about “normies” burning the city to ash and smashing pigs to dust were made by mysterious unindicted persons in Proud Boys senior leadership. This leaves open the scandalous possibility that Capitol Cops have potentially cited incendiary statements from one or more undercover Federal informants to economically shake down innocent civilians in a civil suit:

UCC-1, as well as two additional unindicted co-conspirators referred to only as “Person-One” and “Person-Two” in the Proud Boys indictment, were all in Proud Boys “upper tier leadership,” and appear to have been the most prolific planners and incendiary advocates of “insurrection” in the run-up to and on the day of 1/6.

For example, the DOJ cites statements made almost exclusively by unindicted co-conspirators as statements that “revealed a plan to storm the Capitol and to let the crowd loose.” Below is a direct quote from that DOJ motion. Note that only a single statement in this entire exchange, cited as the DOJ’s proof of an ongoing conspiracy, is made by a conspirator the DOJ actually indicted (Charles Donahoe). Even then, the indicted conspirator’s statements are orders of magnitude less specific, conspiratorial and incendiary than those made by unindicted co-conspirators UCC-1, Person-1 and Person-2:

Statements made contemporaneous to the event, however, revealed a plan to storm the Capitol and to let the crowd loose, e.g.:

UCC-1: I want to see thousands of normies burn that city to ash today

Person-2: Would be epic

UCC-1: The state is the enemy of the people

Person-2: We are the people

UCC-1: Fuck yea

Person-1: God let it happen . . . I will settle with seeing them smash some pigs to dust

Person-2: Fuck these commie traitors

Person-1: It’s going to happen. These normiecons have no adrenaline control . . . They are like a pack of wild dogs

DONOHOE:   I’m leaving with a crew of about 15 at 0830 to hoof it to the monument no colors

Person-2: Fuck it let them loose

Person-1: I agree…    

Perhaps the most remarkable and egregious blunder of all is the lawsuit’s blaming Trump for inciting protests at the Michigan State Capitol building in April 2020:

Given what is now known about the Michigan case, citing this data point is surely closer to stupidity than sociopathic or strategic genius.

The FBI had at least 12 undercover informants pulling strings to incite militia activity, not just in the alleged plot to kidnap Governor Whitmer, but also during the very April 2020 Michigan State Capitol protest itself. As president, Trump technically controlled the Justice Department, and therefore the FBI —  meaning that the fact that the Michigan plot was an FBI set up might be used to assign responsibility to Trump. This is of course not what the Capitol Cops had in mind!

Here is how Buzzfeed described the Michigan rally from the perspective of one undercover informant:

On the final day of April 2020, the Watchmen went to the state Capitol in Lansing to join a big protest against Whitmer’s COVID-19 stay-at-home order.

[FBI Informant] Dan wore a wire for the first time, traveling to the event with Musico, Morrison, and Bellar. The men were decked out in ballistic body armor, brandishing pistols and AR-15 assault rifles — de rigueur for the hundreds of protesters amassing in Lansing that morning. They were there, Morrison and Musico said, to recruit new members, but around noon, as they milled among the crowd, Dan started hearing whispers about storming the Capitol

Panic rising, Dan slipped away from the group for a moment and spoke into the recording device he was carrying, which he knew was being monitored live by his FBI handlers. The Watchmen, he said, were preparing to breach the Capitol. The agents couldn’t speak back to him, but he hoped they could at least warn the police about what was coming.

Then something surprising happened. The Michigan State Police stood down and let the protesters — including those in full tactical gear — enter the building unopposed. They could even bring their guns, so long as they submitted to a temperature check for COVID-19. [Buzzfeed]

So, the Capitol Cops blame Trump for inciting a protest. It is now known, months later, that this protest was effectively an FBI set-up.

How strange that the Capitol Cops seem so uninterested in discovering if the same was true with regards to January 6.

When the January 6 informant details finally break, will the FBI ever be added to one of those open “John Doe 1-10” slots? This case is, after all, about truth and justice… Isn’t it?



NCIS franchise info dump-Sept 15

 


With only days left to go until 2 of the NCIS's begin their new Seasons, a lot of info has been coming out about NCIS and NCIS Hawaii's Season premieres. A couple of new promos, today, the sneak peaks from NCIS's Season premiere were released by CBS, they're down below.

Also, some new NCIS LA info has been coming out as well. Here's a segment from TV Line's Fall preview article from today:  (full story: https://tvline.com/lists/fall-season-premieres-2021-tv-spoilers-preview/ )



And here's the NCIS segment from the same article:



More additional NCIS LA info from the past couple of days:



This is the 1st of 2 episodes that Daniela will be directing this Season. (Which just started filming 2 days ago)  The 2nd will be the 19th episode of this Season.



2 new writers on the same episode. Should be interesting.

And I'm not done yet! Here's the new posters for NCIS and NCIS Hawaii:







So, what do you all think of this huge amount of info? Comments below!



If Truckers Like Me Won’t Comply, Biden’s Vaccine Mandate Could Tank The Economy

Forcing all truck drivers to take injections against COVID-19 poses 
significant challenges to an already struggling U.S. transportation industry, 
on which the nation’s commerce depends.



If President Biden gets his way, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will require truck drivers, along with the overwhelming majority of American employees, to get COVID-19 injections or face stiff penalties. Truck drivers and their employers are already saddled with burdensome regulations via the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA). This new Biden regulation further intruding into drivers’ private medical affairs could make finding qualified truckers increasingly difficult, especially for small trucking companies.

At present, all commercially licensed big-rig drivers are required to submit to a physical medical exam every two years. If that exam finds a driver to be, say, pre-diabetic or pre-hypertensive, he must be prescribed medication from his doctor for the problem and present that to an official examiner in order to be cleared to drive. Then he must be reexamined every year instead of every other year. 

Certain failures to meet the standards in the exam can disqualify drivers and cut their careers short. The Department of Transportation (DOT) physical not only requires testing by urine sample for diabetes and a blood pressure examination, but it is also a comprehensive physical including tests for vision, hearing, cardiovascular health, and (a favorite of the men), a hernia examination.

Why Truckers Might Say, ‘Jump Off a Bridge’

Adding a COVID shot (and potentially boosters) to these already invasive DOT physical requirements might make truckers balk for several reasons. For one, a good deal of young men aged 21 to 30 are in a low-risk group for complications from a COVID infection, and the Centers for Disease Control acknowledges data showing such younger vaccine recipients can later experience dangerous heart inflammation. Young truckers may make the calculation that risking an adverse side effect like this, although rare, is not worth the chance.

Other drivers might have religious or moral objections to how the vaccine was developed. Still others might simply be sick and tired of having Uncle Sam telling them what to do in virtually every area of their life and flat-out refuse for this reason alone.

Biden’s mandate in its current form also does not take into account those who have natural immunity from a previous COVID-19 infection. Some might see a vaccine as unnecessary because they have such natural immunity. 

It is my considered opinion as a truck driver that this latest regulatory overreach may become a bane to small trucking companies at best and strangle the economy due to a severe lack of drivers at worst. I have acquired natural immunity, have ethical concerns about the vaccine, and, quite frankly, already despise complying with nonsensical regulations like this one and many others. If truckers like me decide to refuse this order, several possibilities are in play.

Employment Margins Are Already Very Tight

One possibility is that many of the smaller trucking companies (outfits running 1,000 or fewer trucks) will simply not be able to stay in business. Like many businesses, trucking runs on very tight margins. When trucks and trailers sit around not making revenue for the company because no one is available to drive them, trucking companies can quickly go out of business.

I currently work on perhaps the most important account my small transportation firm has. About ten of us service the local transport of goods for this account. If we all decided to strike when and if this vaccine mandate isn’t blocked by the courts, it is fairly likely the company would lose the account. This doesn’t only affect my company.

Even if our trucking outfit decides not to comply, what would happen to the manufacturers to which we deliver our goods that do? If our consignees decide they won’t let any truckers in who can’t produce proof of vaccination, our shipping client still might be forced to pull the account. That might be another death knell for this small trucking business. It stands to reason that other small businesses, which are already struggling to find qualified employees, could easily be facing the same fate 

As the small and mid-size transportation outfits struggle for drivers and eventually are forced to close, the already rising prices for goods are set to spike even further. Transportation logistics are quite complicated and delicate. A disruption in labor availability is a major shock to supply lines.

Also, what happens if a shipper asks for proof of vaccine or for the driver to submit to a test and he refuses? Or the driver works for a company with fewer than 100 employees? The complications affecting the transportation industry are legion because of the business cuts across so many other aspects of American commerce.

For example, our ten-man operation struggles to maintain quotas when just one man is out for an illness. Even vacation time can be disruptive if not properly planned. Now imagine my manager’s frustration if a man arrives at a consignee to deliver his goods, tests positive for COVID, and the shipment is refused.

Obviously these two factors alone—lack of drivers and cooperation across the actors involved in supply chain fulfillment—would result in further shortages of materials arriving on time at manufacturers. That would mean manufacturers can’t process a certain consumer good (like groceries) and goods don’t appear on the shelves as frequently or in the same quantity. That causes a scarcity, and the prices soar. Scale that to the size of the U.S. economy, and it’s easy to see why Biden’s mandate is a really poor idea, even outside all its legal problems.

Is It Right to Force People to Take Medicines?

Additionally, what are the feds going to do if I refuse to get the vaccine but keep working? They plan to fine my company nearly $14,000 per violation. What will they do if the CEO decides not to pay the fines and keeps running the company as normal? Will federal agents arrest the CEO and all the office employees? What if they resist?

That’s an extreme and unlikely example, of course, but the point is, all laws and regulations are ultimately enforced at the point of a gun. I am convinced that the ruling class and a good chunk of the populace too easily forget what the ultimate enforcement of government regulation entails at the end of the day. Are vaccine mandates worth sending in enforcement officers to punish people for not obeying, or to force them into medical treatments against their wills?

President Biden and his party pay lip service to caring about the working class, but at every opportunity they can, they place more and more burdens on workers. This is precisely the reason most of us blue-collar, middle-class workers have taken to voting the way we do.

In a 2016 lecture at Hillsdale College entitled, “Conservative Civil Disobedience,” sociologist Charles Murray postulated that at some point, in order to stop being tyrannized by the regulatory state, workers and employers will need to refuse to comply, get arrested or fined for it, and take it to court. I’ve only got one question now, as someone who is deciding whether Biden’s vaccine mandate is a hill worth dying on: Is there a lawyer in the house?