“My client is no terrorist. My client is a misguided patriot."
"We need to be sure that the consequences are abundantly clear to anyone who might be unhappy with the 2024, 2028, 2032 or any future election for as long as this case is remembered."
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| Two Proud Boys on January 6. Convicted of Seditious Conspiracy. |
The Proud Boy and Oath Keepers leaders put their intent in writing. They celebrated their success in writing. They were found guilty of seditious conspiracy by a jury. They were sentenced to terms of 15 to 22 years in prison.
So far about 1,000 people who entered the Capitol by force and vandalized it or assaulted police have also been charged. Some people identified and prosecuted received slap-on-the-wrist penalties of a few months of home detention. Others served longer detentions in federal lockups.
Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed as she defied orders to stop while she attempted to crawl through a smashed window in a door inside the Capitol. The door led to a House chamber where Members of Congress and their staffs were sheltering. Her death stopped the crowd's effort to breach that door.
We should celebrate people being arrested, charged, and prosecuted for destroying public property or assaulting police officers. That goes both for Trump supporters on January 6 and for outlaw anarchist hooligans who found refuge by hiding within Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020. Regardless of the larger context of the "worthy cause" -- be it protesting bad police practices or trying to impede the peaceful transfer of office -- violent behavior is politically bad. It muddles the message of the protest. It is also morally wrong and illegal. Police and prosecutors who were slow to identify and arrest hooligans hiding amid lawful BLM protests made a grave error, both politically and in signaling community norms. Republican apologists and minimizers who complain about prosecutions of post-election crimes intended to keep Trump in office, including the crimes committed by Trump's top staff, his lawyers, and by Trump himself, are making a greater one. Throwing rocks at a courthouse in Portland, Oregon is a crime and an offense against public property. Over-throwing an election is a crime and an offense against our democratic republic itself.
The arrests and prosecutions of violent demonstrators have already had a good effect. Had the prosecutions not taken place there might well have been ten thousand, maybe a hundred thousand, people attending the arraignment of Donald Trump in Atlanta, carrying the signs and weapons people from January 6, making gallows, chanting "Hang the Judge," intimidating witnesses and jurors. They might have defied the police again. They might have attempted to break into the courthouse.
This time people thought twice. Good.
I have every presumption that if I were to assault a police officer that I am at risk of immediate death. In a traffic stop, one keeps hands visible, moves slowly, and narrates what one is doing. Courts give officers legal immunity in nearly every circumstance. If they feel at risk, even if in hindsight they confused a flashlight or phone for a gun, they can shoot and kill me. They would still continue to work, get promotions, get their pension. I would still be dead. If one is openly pushing, shoving, stabbing police officers, or crawling through a window amid shouts of intent to do violence, then of course one is at risk of being shot and killed, or prosecuted and imprisoned.
January 6-related defendants may have thought themselves the "good guys," that their cause was noble, and that Trump had authority to authorize what they did. He encouraged it, but did not formally authorize it. He was careful, then and still, and protecting himself. He cannot say he authorized an insurrection without increasing his own trouble. The perpetrators of violence on January 6 were gullible and foolish and they committed provable crimes.
American prisons are full of people who were gullible and foolish and committed provable crimes. Their imprisonment is pure and vivid body language messaging. The message: Don't let Trump talk you into breaking the law.
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5 comments:
Well said, Peter! The insurrectionists' lawyers may be calling them “misguided patriots,” but the asshole who misguided them describes it differently: “They were there proud, they were there with love in their heart...And it was a beautiful day,” Trump said at a recent CNN town hall. Their so-called cause was about as noble as the South’s attempt to perpetuate slavery.
About all I would add is the comparison between that and the Portland riots, a favorite “whataboutism” of the far White, is a classic false equivalence – but that’s already been adequately discussed.
This may not be well thought of by readers of this blog, but I wish more of the protesters would have been shot at. I wonder if more forceful police actions would have mitigated the protesters behavior. At the least, it would have separated the I was just there crowd from the let’s hang Mike Pence crowd. I don’t think being a liberal should mean you are against the rule of law. I am glad to see the insurrection crowd get time. Many of them will fit right in with the prison population that often has black/white thinking.
While I agree that violence in any context is unacceptable, I chafe a bit at the equivalency between the Capital assault and the BLM protests.
The BLM violence was mostly property damage, a misguided and immature expression of frustration, while the Republican attack was directly aimed at harming individuals in the opposing party. Also, the riots in Portland and other cities were not a conspiracy with with the goal of overturning a Presidential election and installing a dictator. This does not even get into the fact that the violence promoted by Republicans is predicated on lies and pandering to bigotry and racism, beginning with the Big Lie.
To my way of thinking the two are wildly disparate.
My main reaction to January 6 was amazement at the blatant incompetence of the government. How could an important federal installation like the Capitol be so poorly defended that a disorganized mob of morons could take it over?
That mob should have been repelled with all necessary force, including deadly force if needed. In the aftermath of the failure, heads should have rolled all the way up the chain of command.
I felt the same way about the “mostly peaceful“ BLM riots in Portland. The rioters should have been dragged off to prison the first night, instead of being allowed to continue rioting for 99 more nights.
The Capitol police force was obviously not adequate to deal with an armed insurrection. As soon as the rebels began attacking the building and police, the National Guard should have been deployed. Unfortunately, the commander-in-chief of the DC National Guard is the POTUS, and he was busy watching his handiwork unfold on TV.
How fitting it would be if Trump and Tarrio could become cellmates.
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