RICO prosecution requires multiple acts wherein members set up an "illegal coordinated scheme or operation (a "racket") to repeatedly or consistently collect a profit" through coercion, fraud or extortion.
How in the hell is this going to apply to loosely organized voluntary protesters who are unarmed in the face of heavily armed police?
They were organized enough to form a 503c charity and then funnel money in and out of it, track expenses and receipts, and perform reimbursements for supplies for conducting what amounts to traditional terrorism. They also established both on-grid and off-grid communication networks to organize and strategize. They also created and internally published their own educational materials to indoctrinate new recruits to the inner core of the cause.
You and I have very different definitions for “loosely”.
You and I have very different definitions for “illegal coordinated scheme,” " repeatedly or consistently collect a profit through coercion, fraud or extortion," and also “conducting what amounts to traditional terrorism”
a 503c charity and then funnel money in and out of it, track expenses and receipts, and perform reimbursements for supplies
You mean a 501c3 charity. Those are all required activities for a 501c3. That is not an criminal enterprise.
conducting what amounts to traditional terrorism
Do you actually support our democratic government powers being corrupted into authoritarianism sprinkled with fascism?
They also created and internally published their own educational materials to indoctrinate new recruits to the inner core of the cause.
That’s what all organizations do, be they religious, charitable, or political.
The entire indictment reads like propaganda piece, carefully crafted as to focus on political ‘anarchist militant’ rhetoric like this is the late 1960s and 70s, to create a false narrative bubble so that it includes any and all of the community organizers involved.
This is an egregious abuse of power through the use of RICO, and it’s not the first time GA has employed it against activist types.
They created booby traps on public property and took at least one completely innocent nonrealted person hostage at gunpoint. Get the fiuck out of here with “egregious abuse of power”. Right to protest doesn’t give you a blank check to maim other people or hold them at gunpoint and it doesn’t threaten democracy to indict them for that.
The RICO case is literally targetting everyone it can and certainly will affect everyone willing to protest. Its called the chilling effect and its a common strategy of authoritarians in government. It’s not actually prosecuting the explicitly henious criminal activity you are trying to reference to justify your support of an obvious egregious abuse of power.
Your position is sophmoric cognitive dissonance, you are demanding to shrink the context of the discussion to justify your pitchfork waving.
RICO is intended to prosecute wealthy and powerful puppeteers who hide behind their disposable pawns to do their dirty work. If this case was only about lawful protest, you have a reasonable argument, but it wasn’t, and you don’t. The fact that they broke laws and harmed innocent bystanders and took action that could have harmed more is OK for you because they did it in the name of a cause you happen to support. Call me whatever you want, you aren’t going to be able to justify the coordinated misdeeds when it infringes on the rights of the innocent.
RICO is intended to prosecute any group of individuals attempting to profit from running a criminal enterprise. The charged individuals as a group having a 501c3 with verbose open records and a verbose paper trail of spending in the first place may even been seen as a possible mitigating factor against finding a RICO conspiracy.
Yes, the case is not about lawful protest, it’s about criminality, and in that context it’s being used to prosecute more than just criminality as it sweeps in leaders among the protestors not involved in criminality. It amounts to suppression of protestors and is a dangerous precedent to support from any level of government prosecution. This RICO case ends up being used in a way to prevent people from exercising First Amendment rights, a public protest is a form of petitioning the Government for a redress of grievances. What specific evidence has put all of these people into a category of criminality that isn’t just a sweeping catch all attempt using ‘anarchist’ activity (which is protected speech activity until acts occur, acts that are criminal activities done for protest are individually prosecuted)?
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Who would or is actually profiting from the alleged criminal activity? That alone makes the RICO charges dubious.
You have no basis in support of prosecution beyond conjecture, and/or you are intentionally ignoring any larger context that doesn’t support your pitchfork desire for prosecution. There is nothing you have put forth that has any forethought or consideration of anything but the prosecutorial indictment claims alone.
I called out your position as bullshit, I didn’t call you an idiot asshole as a person. Learn to recognize the difference, and do better.
Your entire argument hinges on whether the organization had a role to play in the illegal activities vs whether the illegal activities were done by individuals in the organization. If someone in my company does something illegal, there should not be a RICO case against me unless I conspired with them to specifically do that illegal thing.
Your entire argument hinges on whether the organization had a role to play
Well, let’s be real here. It’s the prosecution’s argument. And they obviously believe the organization played a role or they wouldn’t have named those individuals in the indictment.
After reading through it, it does appear that the prosecution believes that senior individuals inside the organization were promoting the illegal behavior without actually getting their hands dirty.
I’m simply pointing out that the ADL are not paragons. They throw their weight around for their own political purposes. Just because bad guys say things you don’t like doesn’t mean they should not be allowed to say anything.
I agree, the ADL should be shut down for saying bad things about a job creator like Elon. Also, all the businesses that decided to stop buying ads on Elons site should also be shut down, it’s a blatant violation of the law for them to do that.
I’m on your side, sheesh. I’m sick of this woke cancel culture nonsense where businesses stop giving money Elon just because he “platforms Nazis”. They should be forced to keep giving him money. Now he has no choice but to take down the ADL.
If you want to run a troll account then great, whatever, but maybe actually look at what you’re responding to and gauge what you’re going to write instead of blanket assuming you know what the comment says without actually reading it first.
Terrible article. They provide no concrete examples, only empty platitudes. And it’s clear they’re extremely biased:
“The national ADL, like the ACLU, the NAACP, and other formerly “apolitical” civil rights groups, is now merely a tax-exempt cadre of the national Democratic Party. Anyone paying any kind of attention knows this. And as the Democratic Party has moved further into the fringes of Left-wing lunacy, the ADL has moved with it—whether a Jewish “antidefamation” issue is at stake or not. The party requires it.”
He calls every group defending civil rights “actually anti free speech” and suggests the ADL doesn’t do enough for Orthodox Jews, without again any evidence, because of “assimilated Jews”. This sentiment comes up again when he says that most Jews “reciprocate” the ADL’s supposed detestation of Judaism.
He’s just another religious conservative detached from reality. It’s actually quite concerning when a lawyer makes baseless claims about an anti defamation organization. I don’t know if it meets the legal definition of defamation, but it certainly gets the common usage for it. Anyone who’s ever been represented by this guy should get another trial, because this guy seems likely to prove your role in the murder in the process of trying to prove your innocence blaming liberals and judges for your arrest.
I saw numerous videos where these guys went out of their to beat the living shit out of blm protestors (not rioters), while calling people antifa - who clearly weren’t, in broad daylight, and nothing happened to them. I can only imagine if I were one of their many victims, that seeing this would be give me some great pleasure. Especially since the “fuck around and find out” rallying call was the thing they said as the brutalized people who were simply protesting brutality.
“During the sentencing, US district judge Timothy Kelly, who was nominated to the bench by Trump, said the evidence suggested Tarrio was “the ultimate leader” of the seditious conspiracy, “the ultimate person, who organized, who was motivated by revolutionary zeal”.”
That's very true, but all of their minds were made up about that years ago. I know the average person is fucking stupid as fuck, but I can't help but wonder how many people are still sitting on the fence when it comes to Trump.
Well, in most Western democracies, the really stupid seem to amount to about 10 to 20 percent (rising sadly). Due to a (completely intended) lack of education and decades of propaganda by the right, that amount seems to be about 30 percent in the US. That’s still very much a minority! On the other hand, Hitler only needed about 35 percent of the popular vote to dismantle democracy in Germany (different political system though).
Funny that you get downvoted like that. Trump wasn’t posting on the Proud Boy’s page to plan the attack, he’s the match that set the gas on fire, he’s not the guy who spread gas all over the living room… He always has the possibility to deny everything and say he didn’t expect them to be dumb enough to actually attack the place because that would be sedition/treason and only an irrational idiot would do that! Where’s this guy organized stuff and put his plan to execution… He’s the irrational idiot…
Trump and the people in Trump’s immediate orbit were in direct or very close indirect contact with all of these groups. They knew exactly what was going to happen. In addition to the normal nutty Trump crowds they reached out to these psycho fascist militias and told them to be there to “fight like hell”. People like the Proud Boys know exactly what an invitation and rhetoric like that mean. This was not a rally that got out of hand. This was all planned out and coordinated with other schemes like the false elector scheme and the Georgia phone call. This was deliberate and planned. Trump is an idiot but he knew what he was doing. This has all been documented in the impeachment hearings, the Congressional Jan 6 investigations, and the recent indictments.
I don’t think it was either of them leading. It’s probably organized crime. Also probably why they try to amp up bitcoins… They got drug and trafficked Bitcoin they want to launder easier. Roger Stone, I think, is a closer connection to the real people puppeting these morons. Probably why Robert Kennedy jumped on board with the rightwing nonsense, because the mafia already killed JFK and he’s owned.
It’s good that he’s going away for 22 years. However, the sentencing guidelines called for between 324 to 405 months (27-33 years) so by the Judge’s own calculations this is a miscarriage of justice and yet another right wing domestic terrorist is being handled with kid gloves. Fucking disgraceful.
Sentences can include upward and downward departures from the guidelines based on the circumstances of the case. It’s also important to remember that the guidelines are non-binding on judges.
2 decades is 2 decades. And, it’s not like when he gets released he’ll be hailed as a hero. Trump will be dead, most of his supporters will probably be dead of old age or COVID. The rest will be too embarrassed that they voted for him to admit it.
When he gets out he’ll be 60. Having spent decades in prison, he won’t be able to retire, and will probably live out the rest of his life working menial jobs that hire ex-felons until he dies in obscurity.
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