The January 6th event at the US Capitol has likely slipped from your personal radar screen. Could that be because it’s a tangled legal web or maybe because the mainstream media has moved along now that Biden’s legal eagles are faltering a bit in making their “insurrection” case.
Capitol ‘rioters’ taking in the beauty of the Capitol rotunda. They could have done an incredible amount of damage had they wished to…
The case they are attempting to make is that certain pro-Trump conservative groups had a well-organized plan to attack the US Capitol on January 6th to halt the certification of Biden as the next president of the United States, and possibly kill lawmakers.
They are having trouble finding a plan and judges are noticing.
Maybe you noticed this AP storymaking the rounds in newspapers large and small. The story appeared in my local paper on Sunday.
Prosecutors struggle with consistent story in Jan. 6 cases
BOSTON (AP) — There’s little doubt the Oath Keepers were planning for something on Jan. 6. The question at the heart of the criminal case against its members and associates in the attack on the U.S. Capitol is: What, exactly, did they intend to do?
Authorities suggested for weeks in court hearings and papers that members of the far-right militia group plotted their attack in advance in an effort to block the peaceful transition of power. But prosecutors have since said it is not clear whether the group was targeting the Capitol before Jan. 6.
Fellow Obama-era US Attorney love birds! I spent some time searching for a photo of the zealous Justice Department attorney Kathryn Leigh Rakoczy. Although I found no professional pic, I did find this fluffy puffy New York Times story about her marriage to a co-worker in 2015, both 33, who married at the Woman’s National Democratic Club in Washington. Why this news warranted a NYT story is beyond me. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/fashion/weddings/first-due-diligence-then-romance.html
“The plan was to unlawfully stop the certification of the Electoral College vote … and the plan was to be prepared to use violence if necessary,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Rakoczysaid during a hearing this month. But the Oath Keepers “did not know precisely the way in which force and violence might be needed to support this plan,” she said.
Authorities are still combing through a sea of evidence in what they say is likely the most complex investigation ever prosecuted by the Justice Department. More than 300 people are facing federal charges and more are expected. The most serious charges have been brought against 10 people described as members and associates of the Oath Keepers and several members of another far-right extremist group, the Proud Boys.
Rakoczy over her skis?
But as the sprawling investigation has unfolded, prosecutors have sometimes struggled to maintain a consistent narrative and had to walk back statements made in court hearings or in papers. It has created an opening for defense attorneys to try to sow doubt in the case.
“The government presented a theory (without evidence) that there was a weeks long plan to invade the Capitol,” an attorney for one of the Oath Keepers, Jessica Watkins, wrote in a recent court filing. “There was no such plan.”
In one case, prosecutors declared in court documents in January there was “strong evidence” the pro-Trump mob aimed to “capture and assassinate elected officials.” The Justice Department quickly clarified it had no such evidence, blaming it on a miscommunication between prosecutors.
After she was pressed by a judge in a recent hearing, Rakoczy conceded authorities “do not have at this point someone explicitly saying, ‘our plan is to force entry into the Capitol in order to stop the certification,’”but cautioned that the investigation is ongoing.
[….]
Prosecutors have also apparently been unable to get on the same page about what to say to the press.
A judge recently scolded the Justice Department over a “60 Minutes” interview during which the prosecutor who was leading the investigation suggested some of the rioters could face sedition charges. Former acting District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin’s interview appeared to violate Justice Department rules and Sherwin is now under internal investigation, a prosecutor told the judge.
Judge orders pretrial release of key Oath Keeper charged in Capitol attack
The decision is a setback for the Justice Department as it seeks to show that some elements of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol were part of sophisticated and organized cells intent on violently blocking the transition of power.
Rakoczy argued that Thomas Caldwell, a 65-year-old Navy veteran who never entered the Capitol on January 6th, remain in custody saying:
…. that Caldwell presents a risk of violence because he and his allies expressed continued belief that the election was stolen even after Jan. 6.
“Those factors still exist for them,” said assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Rakoczy, “that the current political order is something that is problematic and should not be followed.”
Basically she is saying Caldwell should remain in custody because he still believes the election was stolen!
The judge disagreed and released Caldwell to home detention saying that the government’s evidence “falls short of the burden they need to prove he’s a danger to the community if released pending trial.”
The Conservative Treehouse has a story on the government’s faltering arguments here a few days ago:
According to the APstory this case “is likely the most complex investigation ever prosecuted by the Justice Department” so there is a lot at stake for the Dems, for Biden and for up-and-comers like Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Rakoczy.
Is “complex” just a nice way of saying that they are having trouble proving their case that what we witnessed was a well-planned effort to overthrow our government that would justify a witch hunt and constrain our freedom—freedom of speech and assembly.
Oh, and by the way, what happened with Hunter’s laptop? Or, the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax? And, where is Durham?
“Afrasiabi allegedly sought to influence the American public and American policymakers for the benefit of his employer, the Iranian government, by disguising propaganda as objective policy analysis and expertise.”
(Seth D. DuCharme, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York)
Two days ago the news broke that the US Justice Department had filed charges against a long time Iranian agent working for the Islamic Republic of Iran as a mouthpiece for the Ayotollah since the George W Bush administration and throughout the Obama administration. (Hat tip: Cathy)
He lived in the Boston area and worked with an unnamed Congressman as he built up his ‘credibility’ and became a published writer at The New York Times.
I think we should find out how much influence he had over the likes of Former Secretary of State John Kerry during the Obama give-away to Iran.
Feds arrest nuclear scholar for failing to register as Iranian foreign agent
For more than a decade on print and on TV, he looked the part of an academic expert on U.S.-Iranian relations — but Kaveh Afrasiabi was secretly on the Iranian government’s payroll, the feds said Tuesday.
See below what Afrasiabi says about his 2019 book***
Afrasiabi, 63, a longtime U.S. resident, was charged with conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent for working on behalf of Iran for the past 14 years, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said.
A writer and scholar, Afrasiabi received a Ph.D. in political science from Boston University and wrote a thesis titled “State and Populism in Iran” under the guidance of famed historian Howard Zinn, according to the bio on his website. The feds say he lives in Watertown, Mass., just outside of Boston.
Afrasiabi’s expertise helped him land TV speaking gigs, and informed his op-ed articles in The New York Times and his books. He was also a visiting professor at Harvard University and University of California-Berkeley.
All the while, say the feds, he was supported by the Iranian government.
Daily News continues….
Wouldn’t you like to know how many Dems were getting advice from the alleged Iranian spy?
As recently as 2020, Afrasiabi provided advice to the Iranian government on how to handle the fallout from the U.S. killing of Gen. Qasem Soleimani.
He suggested the country stop providing information on its nuclear program until the UN condemned the killing, the feds said.
It would “strike fear in the heart of the enemy,” he wrote, according to prosecutors.”
Here is what theJustice Department press statementsays about that last bit, about Trump’s killing of Soleimani and how Afrasiabi was directing how the UN Security Council should act and how a gullible US media should view it.
…. in January 2020, Afrasiabi emailed Iran’s Foreign Minister and Permanent Representative to the United Nations with advice for “retaliation” for the U.S. military airstrike that killed Major General Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force, the external operations arm of the Iranian government’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, proposing that the Iranian government “end all inspections and end all information on Iran’s nuclear activities pending a [United Nations Security Council] condemnation of [the United States’] illegal crime.”Afrasiabi claimed that such a move would, among other things, “strike fear in the heart of [the] enemy.”
And, see what Daniel Greenfield said at Frontpage magazineabout the charges against Afrasiabi.
Who was the Congressman working with the alleged spy? Dem or Republican we should be told!
***Don’t skip this!
A summary atAmazonof Iranian agent Afrasiabi’s November 2019 book (emphasis is mine):
With the advent of the Trump Administration, relations between Iran and the United States have become increasingly conflictual to the point that a future war between the two countries is a realistic possibility. President Trump has unilaterally withdrawn the US from the historic Iran nuclear accord and has re-imposed the nuclear-related sanctions, which had been removed as a result of that accord. Reflecting a new determined US effort to curb Iran’s hegemonic behavior throughout the Middle East, Trump’s Iran policy has all the markings of a sharp discontinuity in the Iran containment strategy of the previous six US administrations. The regime change policy, spearheaded by a hawkish cabinet with a long history of antipathy toward the Iranian government, has become the most salient feature of US policy toward Iran under President Trump. This turn in US foreign policy has important consequences not just for Iran but also for Iran’s neighbors and prospects of long-term stability in the Persian Gulf and beyond. This book seeks to examine the fluid dynamic of US-Iran relations in the Trump era by providing a social scientific understanding of the pattern of hostility and antagonism between Washington and Tehran and the resulting spiraling conflict that may lead to a disastrous war in the region.
They hated President Trump!
Kind of leaves you wondering what role the Iranian government had in the Great Election Steal of 2020.
And, one last thing! So Iranian agents can teach at Harvard, but Trump aides are barred from teaching there, and a movement is afoot to strip Harvard degrees from anyone who was, or is, loyal to President Donald Trump.
“This was clear marriage fraud and immigration fraud, that’s a fact.”
(DHS insider with knowledge of the investigation)
That is the gist of news unearthed by Leo Hohmann writing at World Net Daily this week.
A Dept. of Homeland Security insider says they have the goods on her, but the US Attorney in Minnesota, Erica MacDonald, will not be filing charges.
One more example, even under the Trump Administration, that there are two standards of justice one for them and another for us.
If you are new to the controversy, see my previous posts on the Congresswoman’s marriages.
For additional background, if you are interested, for years at Refugee Resettlement WatchI chronicled the history of immigration fraud that was rampant in the Somali ‘community.’
Back in 2008 (and down the memory hole) the US State Department actually halted all Somali family reunification due to the tens of thousands of fraudulent cases they had unearthed. Only a tiny handful of those cheaters was ever located and removed.
DHS insider spills beans on Ilhan Omar criminal charges for marrying brother
Federal investigators have decided not to prosecute Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., for immigration fraud despite the publicly available evidence that she married her brother to gain him lawful status to remain in the United States.
The news that two separate federal agencies have declined to pursue charges against Omar after a months-long probe came from a veteran insider at the Department of Homeland Security.
The case was investigated by the FBI and involved at least one other agency, but the U.S. Attorney in Minnesota, Erica MacDonald, has decided not to prosecute.
Editor: It is my opinion that US Attorney MacDonald and the whole Justice Department are scared s******* that if charges are brought against Omar, riots of a greater magnitude than those experienced in the George Floyd fiasco would erupt and result in a race war that could spread further once the rest of Minneapolis is burned down.
MacDonald is a Republican who was appointed to her post in June 2018 by President Trump.
[….]
Abdihakim Osman Nur, a member of the Somali-American community in Minnesota, was the first person to go on the record with firsthand evidence of Omar’s marriage to her brother. He told the British-based DailyMail.com earlier this year that Omar told him she wanted to get her brother a green card so he could stay and work in the United States. At the time she was married to her first husband, Ahmed Hirsi.
[….]
Omar denounced the accusations as “disgusting lies” by bloggers who were engaging in “Islamophobia.” She refused to address questions on the matter.
Read about the politics of the decision, but I still maintain that it is fear, fear of violence and chaos, after all we have been trained in recent weeks to stand down.
Not surprisingly a whole bunch of Islamic groups are crying foul with the federal government’s decision to go for the maximum punishment for the pair of alleged bombers we told you about hereandhere recently.
Muslim groups decry ‘excessive’ prosecution of lawyers charged with torching police car
Lawyers Urooj Rahman and Colinford Mattis
(RNS) — Dozens of Muslim rights groups have joined a chorus of support for two Brooklyn human rights attorneys facing possible life sentences over charges of torching an empty police vehicle.
Lawyers Urooj Rahman and Colinford Mattis stand accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail through the broken window of an abandoned police cruiser during Brooklyn racial justice protests on May 30. The device burned part of the empty cruiser’s dashboard, prosecutors allege. Nobody was injured during the incident.
“No rational human being can ever believe that hurling firebombs at police officers and vehicles is justified,” Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue said.
The two have both pleaded not guilty to several arson and federal explosives charges. If convicted, they face a 45-year mandatory minimum sentence, with the possibility of life in prison. The attorneys are being held without bail at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center.
In a statement, a coalition of 35 Muslim, South Asian and Arab civil rights and advocacy groups*** argue the treatment is disproportionately harsh and likely linked in part to the lawyers’ racial and ethnic backgrounds. Rahman, 31, is a Pakistani American Muslim woman. Mattis, 32, is the son of Jamaican immigrants.
“These excessive charges targeting Colin and Urooj set a dangerous precedent, and function to instill fear and stifle protest by Black, South Asian, and Muslim protestors at a moment where millions take to the streets worldwide to demand justice,” the statement reads.
“This prosecution is also rooted in a longstanding history of anti-Black racism and structural Islamophobia in the United States.”
The coalition, led by the American Muslim Bar Association, Believers Bail Out and Justice For Muslims Collective, claims the pair is being targeted “for their solidarity with those murdered by state violence.”
***I wanted to see the whole list of 35 groups coming to their defense, but couldn’t find it (I was too lazy to look for too long), buthereis the American Muslim Bar Association’s statement.
Jihad Watch has more, but I’m still not seeing the whole list!
As you can imagine, with all the fear and the federal bucks floating around scammers are in fat city.
Editor: I know a few of you noticed that I haven’t been posting because I heard from you. Thanks for your concern that I might have been sick. But a big storm took out our TV and internet for a couple of days. LOL! I have to admit, I wasn’t sure if I wanted it back on! Amazing how many projects around the farm could get done with most access to the world cut off! So, I am way behind in finding stories and posting and will be trying to catch up.
There are way to many stories to post about scammers in this brave new world we live in now, but this one caught my eye at Psychology Today. The title grabbed my attention!
5 Coronavirus Scams That Can Fool Even Smart People
Here are a few examples from the article, but please read it all!
In just the first nine days of April, the Federal Trade Commission reported $7 million lost to scams.
Here’s a current rogue’s gallery of coronascams:
The Stimulus Scam. You’re excitedly waiting for your stimulus check or student-loan forgiveness. You get an email with a government logo. It says you need to apply—Just provide your Social Security Number and date of birth and perhaps a small registration fee. Gotcha.
The CoronaTracking Scam. You heard, correctly, that Apple and Google are creating a corona-tracking app. Then, you get a text claiming to be from the government, perhaps the CDC or WHO, informing you that you’re eligible to get the app free. It says that, to avoid fraud, it needs your Social Security Number and birth date. Gotcha.
[….]
The Product Scam. An email or text offers to sell you sanitizer, masks, etc. By the time you get to the final screen, the shipping cost atop an inflated price makes it exorbitant. But you’ve put in the effort to get that far (commitment bias), so you click “order.” Worse, you click “order” and not only don’t get the product, the scammers use your credit card to buy themselves cool stuff or gift cards for their programmers so the scam can metastasize.
More! Read it all and see if you are one of the smart people who just might have fallen for one of these!
