Author: clearandpresentdanger

In September 2020, a Minneapolis Trump supporter’s home was savagely attacked by antifa. Or possibly by BLM supporters. Or by Biden-supporting anarchists? In any event, somebody painted “Biden 2020 BLM (A)” on Denis Molla’s garage doors and set fire to his camper. That fire spread significantly, damaging other vehicles and his home.

Federal investigators have found the culprit and, surprise, they say it was Molla himself. CBS Minneapolis reports that Molla now faces two counts of wire fraud for setting the fire, then filing insurance claims for $300,000 in damages. He was graciously hosted in a Minneapolis courtroom last Tuesday for the beginning of his federal trial, and it’s very unlikely he’ll be scoring a Trump pardon like Trump’s more (ahem) significant allies did, because Trump no longer has the power to do that.

There are many lessons we can learn here, and even more lessons than that if we want to be jerks about it, which we absolutely do. Once again it appears that nearly all politically motivated crimes against Trump supporters are self-inflicted, suggesting that Trump voters are, broadly speaking, so prone to criminal behavior that not even they are safe from themselves. The vast majority of incidents of proven election fraud, for example, have turned out to be Trump supporters voting for dead relatives, Trump supporters giving conspiracy theorists unauthorized access to voting machines, Trump supporters faking signatures to get their names on the ballot, Trump supporters financing private detectives willing to run random repairmen off the road on the off chance their work trucks are stuffed with secret ballots, or just straight up ballot-box stuffing.

Similarly, we may yet learn that half or more of the shadowy not-organization known as “antifa” actually consists of Trump supporters viciously attacking themselves in order to put themselves in their place. In any event, Trump supporters seem to think that both antifa and their local Black Lives Matter movements exist primarily to harass them, personally, by forcing them to read things written on their house.

I imagine many of you are rather tired of this at this point. Many of us around these parts are members of “antifa,” at least for all Trump supporters know, but if Trump’s supporters are going to go around pretending to be pro-Biden provocateurs, they should at least do enough damn research to know how secret pro-Biden cells actually target and take down individual nobodies who have gotten on The Big List of Trump Supporters To Annoy.

Trump supporters, do you really think that “what if we paint on this guy’s house” is the grand master plan of the police reform movement and antifascist cells nationwide? Really? Or is that just the easiest thing to fake? And if Biden 2020 supporters were going to burn down your past-its-prime recreational camper, don’t you think they’d do a thorough evaluation of the surrounding terrain so as to prevent the blaze from spreading to other, unrelated vehicles? That’s arson 101, right there. No Biden voter worth their salt would burn your camper down without doing at least a cursory environmental impact report.

Please start faking better crimes. Please. Here are some tips for how Black Lives Matter protesters, anarchists, antifascists, and Donald Trump’s other various enemies actually harass podunk Trump supporters. If you want people to believe you’re a victim of any of these groups, you can start by mimicking the crimes they’re actually responsible for.

Anarchists are a tough crowd known for despising authority and all its symbols, and there is no more flagrant symbol of government authority than government-issued money. Anarchists are therefore well-known for something called “twentybombing.” In the dark of night, anarchist agents enter the homes of Trump supporters looking for $20 bills. If they find any, they will steal them. The anarchists will then go to the nearest public library and shove your $20 bills through the book deposit slot.

It’s a perfect crime. Nobody in these pro-anarchy groups goes around painting circled “A”s on people’s houses, that’s just ridiculous. But every day in America, Trump supporters wake up to find they have $20 less than they thought they had, while local librarians gasp in confusion on seeing their library’s book deposit bins overflowing with loose Andrew Jacksons.

Want to fake a crime against you perpetrated by anarchists? Take all your $20 bills and shove them through the little library slot. Go home, call up the local news, and claim anarchists did it. There ya go, sport, you’re on television.

Antifa and anarchists aren’t the same thing, and Trump supporters need to get this through their skulls if they want to fake crimes by either group. Antifa stands for “antifascist,” or an opposition to fascism, while anarchists are against whatever presents itself but tend to focus most of their rage on $20 bills. Only fascists are targeted by antifa, so if you’re going to claim you’re a victim of antifa you first need to go around saying fascist things. Already done that? Fine, now you can burn down your own camper. But don’t do that either, because that’s not how antifa operates. Antifa is a loose community of idealists with access to much better technology than your average camper owner; they specialize in attacks using ultraviolet radiation.

Let’s explain. If you’re a Trump supporter with a pro-Trump flag hanging off your house, you may notice that the colors on that flag fade rather quickly, right? It starts out looking bright and new, then begins to look tired, then begins to look washed-out. This is because local antifa cells drive around each evening looking for Trump flags; when they find one, they briefly shine a very powerful ultraviolet light at it, causing it to fade just a little bit.

While the effect of a single antifa drive-by is barely perceptible, a Trump flag left out night after night will begin to show irreversible effects. Flags targeted by elite super-antifa cells will, however, fade out completely. If you want to claim your home was attacked not just by antifa but by super-antifa, dear Trump supporters, hang a white flag outside your house. Then go to your local police station and file your report: Antifa turned my Trump flag white. You’ll have a much more believable story to tell than the “somebody drew on my house” version, and if you tell the insurance company that it was a special Trump flag signed by the big man himself, you might be able to defraud them for an extra five bucks.

There are also myriad groups that are part antifa and part anarchist—too many to go through individually. There’s anarfa, and antichist, and anar-anti, and a bunch of others. Generally these groups focus on the forceable distribution of hard candies and tend to skew older. If your parents or grandparents tend to always have butterscotch candies on hand, for example, you should be wary. Sharing hard candies is socialism. Sharing bad hard candies is anarchy.

That leaves Black Lives Matter, but that one’s easy so we can dispense with it quickly. There’s only one crime that Black Lives Matter supporters tend to target Trump supporters with, and that’s “being seen.” Black Lives Matter supporters are known for walking on sidewalks and for going shopping. Sometimes they drive, but other times they operate toll booths. If you see a person in public who is not you and is not part of your immediate family, they are likely a Black Lives Matter supporter and you should, I don’t know, wet your pants or something.

This won’t technically count as a crime, but you might be able to bilk your insurance company anyway. Like, maybe whatever you’re sitting on will suffer water damage. Oh—or you can always go to the police and file a complaint that Black Lives Matter peed on your favorite chair or whatever. Here’s a tip: When filing the report, discretely pass the officer a $20 bill. If the officer quietly accepts the bill he’s likely to file out a report that makes your chair damage seem more severe, but if the officer gets unaccountably furious about you handing them $20 you know that they’re not actually a police officer, they’re an anarchist posing as one. If that happens, you’re in trouble. It means that anarchists have captured the local police department. They’ll say they’re seizing your $20 bill for “evidence,” but we both know the truth. That bill is going to be dumped into a library’s book return slot within a day.

So go nuts, Trump supporters, but at least make your fake crimes believable. Put a white flag outside your house and claim antifa bleached it using superweapons. Hand over all your cash to local librarians while wearing a fake mustache so nobody can tell it was you.

Nobody’s going to believe anarchist Biden-supporting Black Lives Matter supporters took their rage out on your two-car garage. Everybody will believe that Trump’s enemies are going around making the colors on your Trump flags fade or giving money to public libraries, because those are crimes every other Trump supporter has also seen happen. Just remember to look sad when you’re describing it to the police officers and the local reporters and you’ll be fine. Just … enough with the spray paint and poorly planned arson already.

This affair is better than a circus midway freak show !!!

On Aug. 20, Trump will be traveling to Milwaukee for an “American Freedom Tour” event.

Pricing for the day-long event, which will include Trump, Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump Jr., Dinesh D’Souza, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Judge Jeanine Pirro and Sheriff Mark Lamb, of Pinal County, Arizona, ranges from $9 for seating in an overflow room to $395 for seating in the VIP section to $3,995 for seating in the “Presidential Section,” which includes a meeting with Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle.   The price is not listed for seating in the “Patriot Section,” which comes with a meeting with Trump and Pompeo.

In economics, they call it the law of unintended consequences:  An event ultimately produces an outcome, sometimes negative, that was not expected.

That’s what is happening to Brandy Bottone of Plano, TX, a mother who is 34 weeks into her pregnancy.

On June 29 she was driving on U.S. Highway 75 South and headed to the Interstate 635 West interchange.

“I was driving to pick up my son. I knew I couldn’t be a minute late, so I took the HOV [high-occupancy vehicle] lane. As I exited the HOV, there was a checkpoint at the end of the exit. I slammed on my brakes, and I was pulled over by police.

“An officer peeked in and asked, ‘Is there anybody else in the car?’

“I said, ‘Well, yes.’

“He asked, ‘Where?’

“I pointed to my stomach and said, ‘My baby girl is right here. She is a person.’

“He said, ‘Oh, no. It’s got to be two people outside of the body.’

“One officer kind of brushed me off when I mentioned this is a living child, according to everything that’s going on with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. ‘So I don’t know why you’re not seeing that,’ I said.

“He was like, ‘I don’t want to deal with this.’ He said, ‘Ma’am, it means two persons outside of the body.’

“He waved me on to the next cop who gave me a citation and said, ‘If you fight it, it will most likely get dropped.’

“But they still gave me a ticket. So my $215 ticket was written to cause inconvenience?

“This has my blood boiling. How could this be fair? According to the new law, this is a life.

“I know this may fall on deaf ears, but as a woman, this was shocking.”

I mean, might as well make the argument!

SAYING SOMETHING DOES NOT MAKE IT TRUE.

Read that again. THINK about it.

Saying something does not make what you said true—no matter how loudly you say it,  no matter how many times you say it, no matter how many times you hear it on Fox, no matter how many times Trump says it, no matter how many time your MAGA friends say it.

Here are some things that ARE true:

• Trump is NOT intelligent.
• He is NOT a good businessman.
• He is NOT a strong leader.
• He will NOT make America great.
• He IS a habitual liar.
• He IS a sexual predator.
• He IS a coward.
• He did NOT “make America great again”.
• He did NOT win the 2020 election.
• He DID plan, call for, and incite the attempted coup on January 6th, 2021..For those of you still reading—and not curled up on the floor in a fetal position with your thumbs in your mouths—I know the above may have caused you extreme discomfort and spiked your blood pressure. I make no apology for that. It is simply the price of your willful ignorance.

 

 

Now, go home and get your shine box.

 

A Fulton County judge has reportedly ordered Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to appear before a special grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump for alleged election tampering.

According to Jose Pagliery of The Daily Beast, the judge’s order was filed on Friday.

“The judge called Graham ‘a necessary and material witness’ who can’t dodge grand jury testimony,” Pagliery reported.

Graham is scheduled to appear on Aug. 2, the order said. But the Republican senator is expected to fight the subpoena from his home state of South Carolina.

Last week, a judge also ordered Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani to appear before the grand jury.

We all are familiar with Trump’s call to GA Secretary of State Raffensberger, asking him to “find another 11,000 votes.”  What you may not have noticed is that Graham made the same call to the GA SecState.  Graham and Trump both are looking at likely felony convictions.  Let’s hope they serve their time in a Georgia state prison . . . maybe on a chain gang.

This morning on “Face the Nation,” Glenn Youngkin did his usual: lots of dodging and lying, in an attempt to soften or conceal his extreme policy positions. 

• Basically admitted that the only reason he’s not pushing to completely ban abortion in Virginia is that Democrats control the State Senate. If Democrats lose the Senate next year, god forbid, then watch out!
• Said he believes “life begins at conception,” which of course implies a complete ban on abortion, as well as several forms of contraception, embryonic stem cell research, etc.
• Dodged on whether he’d ever support a “full ban” on abortion. For now, he’s for a “15-week pain threshold bill.”  Except that, as this NPR fact check reports, “this contradicts widely accepted medical research from 2005. This study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, concluded that a fetus is not capable of experiencing pain until somewhere between 29 or 30 weeks. Researchers wrote that fetal awareness of pain requires ‘functional thalamocortical connections.’ Those thalamocortical fibers begin appearing between 23 and 30 weeks’ gestational age, but the capacity for pain perception comes later.” So yet again, Youngkin’s full of crap.
• Claimed that Democrats supposedly support abortion “all the way up through and including birth” (an apparent reference to Ralph Northam talking about a case where a fetus is “non viable” and has “severe deformities”). In fact, as this fact check finds, “Virginia Governor Ralph Northam was not supporting ‘infanticide.’ According to a spokeswoman, he was referring to a ‘extremely rare case’ of a nonviable pregnancy.”
• On whether or not he’d push to codify same-sex marriage in Virginia, he dodged and weaved, blathering about the Supreme Court returning these types of decisions to the states, then stating that “we actually do protect same-sex marriage in Virginia, that’s the law…and therefore as governor of Virginia, we protect same-sex marriage.”  Huh? In fact, the Virginia constitution STILL BANS same-sex marriage, thanks to *REPUBLICANS* who put the ban in there and to the *REPUBLICANS* who blocked moves to amend the constitution in order to get it out of there!
  • Asked about whether his PAC would support and spend money to help elect extremists/insurrections like Doug Mastriano for governor in Pennsylvania, Youngkin dodged, talks about electing Republican candidates for Congress (all of whom are extremists, by the way) in Virginia.  Youngkin then dodged again on Mastriano, said “we’re still working on my agenda,” and flat-out lied that “there are states, like Virginia, where people recognize that a Democrat [sic] governor has not done a good job, and a Republican governor, like Republican governors all over America, can do a good job.” As Aaron Rupar tweeted, “Youngkin is an astoundingly slippery character. Check out how he dodges a question about whether he’ll help pro-coup Republicans win elections this November.” Slimier. Than. Whale. Shit.

By the way, Bob Costa of “Face the Nation” did try to pin Youngkin down, but not hard enough IMHO. Also, Costa and other journalists need to call out lies, in real time, and even stop interviews if the person they’re talking to keeps lying. But, of course, they won’t do that, because apparently they have whatever number of questions to get through, and also because they’re afraid if they “bark” at their guests (as Chuck Todd once admitted) they fear that the liars won’t come on their shows (would that really be a loss?).

 

The next round of Jan 6 Committee hearings will lay bare the connections between Trujp and his coup plotters and the foot soldiers who stormed the US Captiol, attacked Capitol Police officers,  and attempted to assassinate VP Pence.

First, here is the schedule for the upcoming hearings.

• Tuesday, July 12, 0222; 10:00 AM
• Next meetings to be announced

And now — the connections between Trump and the mob

One of the most crucial questions for both the FBI investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol and the House Select Committee inquiry is the connection between President Trump and the militant groups that carried out the attack.

The next hearing of the January 6^th Committee, scheduled for July 12 and led by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), reportedly “plans to detail known links and conversations between political actors close to Trump and extremists,” according to the New York Times.

While it is not clear what evidence the committee will present, a network of operatives surrounding retired Lt. General Michael Flynn — an inspirational figure for rank-and-file Trump supporters protesting the outcome of the election — helped build an infrastructure for months in advance that stoked anger, called on the president to invoke the Insurrection Act, and amplified his call to supporters to be in Washington for a “wild rally” on Jan. 6.

One of the initiatives that sprung up around Flynn was called Operation Voter Integrity.  You will recall that Flynn was Trump’s former national security advisor who was seeking a pardon after the US Department of Justice dismissed charges for lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador.

Felisa Blazek, a New Hampshire-based event planner with ties to the QAnon community, outlined plans for the initiative in an interview with Tamara Leigh, a podcaster active in the campaign to vindicate Flynn, and Brent Hamachek, the executive editor of the right-wing publication Human Events. As Blazek described it, the project would deploy GOP activists to monitor polling places for voter fraud, with pro-Trump groups standing by to escalate complaints up through a network that she said would ultimately reach the White House.

Two of the groups mentioned by Blazek, Veterans for Trump and Bikers for Trump, would later show up at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Blazek described a phone tree in which one activist “would just call the head of your state for Bikers for Trump.” She continued: “One phone call. They dispatch 20 to 30 people to that precinct. Second phone call, you call in Veterans for Trump. They dispatch 20 to 30 people. They just show there and they just stand up, and they just let you know you’re not alone. The police will come. If the police don’t come, they’re all trained. We’re just standing by and letting you know that we know.”

Blazek could not be reached for comment for this story.

Two days after the election, Veterans for Trump co-founder Joshua Macias and an associate, Antonio LaMotta, were arrested on weapons charges outside the Philadelphia Convention Center, where election officials were tabulating votes. Local police made the arrests after receiving an FBI alert about a possible attempt to interfere with the vote count, according to the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office. The police reportedly recovered a semi-automatic AR-15-syle assault rifle, samurai sword and hundreds of firearms cartridges from the Hummer that the two men drove from Virginia.

Macias and LaMotta could not be reached for comment for this story.

At the time, some Democratic officials and voting rights groups condemned President Trump’s instruction to supporters to “go into the polls and watch very carefully,” saying it amounted to voter intimidation, and the Department of Homeland Security warned that polling places could be “flash points for potential violence.”

Both Macias and Blazek were avid supporters of Flynn.

Two years earlier, Macias had organized a rally to support Flynn outside the DC federal courthouse at the former general’s sentencing hearing, where he stood alongside Tamara Leigh, according to a report in Mother Jones. Chris Cox, the founder of Bikers for Trump, also attended the protest to support Flynn.

Blazek had recently organized a two-day QAnon-friendly gathering called the Patriot Party in Scottsdale, Ariz. that featured Barbara Redgate, Flynn’s sister.

During an interview to promote the event, Blazek had said, “We’re hoping to host General Flynn and his family as our honored guests. If they would choose to speak, that would be great. But really, we just want them to come there, and support them.” Blazek added that the Flynn family was like “the tip of the spear in our movement.”

David Sumrall, a Dallas-based organizer who founded the right-wing group Stop Hate, similarly extolled the Flynn family in an interview with Redgate to promote the Patriot Party.

“We want to make sure that General Flynn’s getting a message of support and love and encouragement because we have his back,” Sumrall said. “We understand what happened to him, and the whole fact that he’s willing to take one for the team.”

Soon after Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 election, Blazek and Sumrall, alongside Ali Alexander and Tomi Collins, began organizing rallies across the country to protest the electoral outcome.

Pasquali “Pat” Scopelliti, a business coach based in Charlottesville, Va. and frequent contributor on the PardonFlynnNow.com website, praised Blazek and Macias together in a post-election thread on Twitter. Referring to the two by their Twitter handles and using hashtags associated with Blazek’s election mobilization effort and a parallel campaign led by Alexander, Scopelliti tweeted: “Both @PatriotAssembly and @JoshuaMacias are on the Field of Fight, right now. I choose to support them, as should you./ #1LoudVoice/ #StopTheSteal.”

The following day, Scopelliti issued another Twitter thread, declaring that America was at “war,” with “voter fraud” being the “ultimate weapon,” while speculating that “$1,000 bottles of rice wine” were “being uncorked in Beijing.”

“There are three people I must mention,” Scopelliti continued, recognizing Sumrall, alongside Blazek and Macias. “They are: @HelpStopHate, @PatriotAssembly, @JoshuaMacias. These three patriots have known in their bones, the nature of this war. And they have joined forces to lead the ground game of its fight.”

Scopelliti attached a digital flier to the tweet with the heading “All 50 State Capitol Buildings, #1LoudVoice, Truth Rally, 12:00 PM across the nation.” The flier included URLs for nearly a dozen pro-Trump groups, including Sumrall’s Stop Hate; Blazek’s Patriot Party; PardonFlynnNow.com; and Cowboys for Trump, led by Couy Griffin, who had attended the Patriot Party event in Scottsdale. Griffin would later be arrested for his role in the attack on the Capitol, and found guilty of entering and remaining in a restricted building.

Veterans for America First, the successor organization to Veterans for Trump, currently lists Scopelliti as its community engagement advisor on the organization’s website.

Despite being out on a $750,000 bail with pending firearms charges in Philadelphia, Macias and LaMotta traveled to Washington, DC in early January for a cluster of rallies culminating with President Trump’s speech at the Ellipse. Macias was present during a brief meeting between Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes in an underground parking garage on Jan. 5, the eve of the attack on the Capitol. Tarrio and Rhodes both face seditious conspiracy charges in separate cases related to the attack on the Capitol.

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner noted the meeting during a press conference last month to announce a motion to have Macias held for contempt of court due to his actions at the Capitol.

“When people are planning a bank robbery, when they are planning a mob hit, they do not let uninvolved people come to that small private meeting,” Krasner said. “When people are planning serious crimes, the only people that are going to be there, especially when they’re trying to be secretive, are people that are seriously involved.”

Also present at the parking garage meeting were Kelly SoRelle, who now serves as general counsel for the Oath Keepers, and Latinos for Trump President Bianca Gracia.

On Jan. 6, Blazek, Macias, LaMotta, Rhodes, SoRelle, Gracia and members of a Bikers for Trump faction known as Boots on the Ground gathered at the MAGA Freedom Rally in front of the Russell Senate Office Building, a block away from the Capitol.

In an interview with Sumrall last fall, SoRelle said she went back to a hotel room to eat and get warm, while Rhodes went to the Capitol. Rhodes took up a position outside the Capitol, while more than a dozen Oath Keepers members outfitted in tactical gear pushed through the crowd in a stack and followed a mob into the building. SoRelle said in that interview in September that there was no plan to attack the Capitol. In January, Rhodes and 10 other members of the Oath Keepers were charged with seditious conspiracy — a charge that amounts to attempting to overthrow the government by force. Two of those charged have pleaded guilty.

“Stewart had guys that were protecting different speakers at different events, namely Ali Alexander, who was supposed to have been literally on the Capitol grounds,” SoRelle told Sumrall last September. “Then everybody’s like, ‘Well, we don’t know where everybody’s at. This is chaos. Like, what the heck?’ So, that’s why we ended up at the Capitol. We went down there just to see if we could locate his people. You know? And then next thing you take it straight to crazy la-la land, as in everybody’s the mastermind, and whatever.”

Sumrall, who used social media to raise money to take a “team” to Washington, DC, concurred with SoRelle’s account.

Sumrall said he told FBI agents: “Guys, listen: The plan was to get to DC. That’s where it stopped. That’s where it stopped. You’re never going to find anything where anybody says, ‘We’re going in the Capitol.’”

Sumrall’s voice can be heard in a video posted on Stop Hate’s Instagram account that was taken from the west side of the Capitol. The post is accompanied by a text comment from the account owner: “We’ve broken down the gates and made it onto the Capitol grounds.”

Another video on the Stop Hate Instagram account shows police in riot gear lined up on the inauguration review stand and the terrace facing rioters, with the caption, “#StormTheCapitol.”

Macias and LaMotta also went to the Capitol. Footage recently obtained by NBC News shows LaMotta inside the Capitol. He has not been arrested to date.

With LaMotta standing nearby, Macias addressed the crowd on the east side of the Capitol, according to video archived by the @capitolhunters Twitter account.

“Mike Pence is a Benedict Arnold,” Macias roared. “We believed in you, Vice President. We had hope that you would do what’s right for our Constitution. I stood with you onstage, sir. We believed in you.

“President Trump, you have the ability to pass — if you have the strength, sir — the Insurrection Act is now,” Macias continued. “You have the power, sir, and we support you 110 percent. Do what’s right, sir…. Defend the Constitution against foreign and domestic enemies. Those domestic enemies are here. If you’re not awake, America, be awoke. The enemy is not at the gates; the enemy is already here.”

Another person could be heard answering Macias with the QAnon slogan: “Where we go one, we go all!”

“That’s right!” Macias said. “One loud voice! We are one. We are united. I am Josh Macias, Vets for Trump. We will never quit.”