In New Challenge To Objective Reality, January 6 Insurrectionists Sue Cops Who Defended Capitol
GOSH WE WONDER IF TRUMP WILL SETTLE FOR $MILLIONS?
Undoubtedly inspired by the Trump administration’s decision last year to give Ashli Babbitt’s family $5 million in damages for cruelly protecting members of Congress from her and other rioters on January 6, 2021, a new set of seditious grifters are out to see how much money they can get for failing to get away with a coup. Members of the mob who attacked the Capitol that day are suing the government in hopes they’ll be richly compensated for all the pain and suffering they experienced when Capitol and DC Metro police tried to keep them from invading the US Capitol.
The Federal Tort Claims Act lawsuit filed in Florida accuses police defending the Capitol of “indiscriminately shooting chemical munitions and pepper spray” into the crowd at the Capitol, without of course any mention of what the crowd was doing there. The lead plaintiffs, protesters Patrick and Marie Sullivan and Proud Boy creep Alan Fischer III, accuse the police of causing “physical and emotional injuries, including but not limited to chemical burns, concussive trauma, emotional distress, and other damages to plaintiffs, class members and thousands of other protesters.”
Politico notes that Fischer was charged with assault, but his case was thrown out before trial by Trump’s pardon of all the attackers; the Sullivans, according to the lawsuit, were in the crowd on January 6 and say they were harmed by pepper spray, but they were apparently not charged with any criming.
The complaint is sort of darkly hilarious throughout, since to read its description of January 6, you’d get the impression that there was nothing much going on at the Capitol that day, merely a peaceful protest that cops brutally attacked for no reason at all. We seem to remember it differently somehow.
The plaintiffs are requesting the case become a class action, on behalf of all members of the hive of scum and villainy who gathered on the “west plaza, west steps and/or west lawn” of the Capitol on January 6 and were “struck by weapons or exposed to chemicals launched or thrown or weapons used by law enforcement” while the members of the class were trying to beat the living shit out of anyone who got in their way.
Haha, we kid, but not tortiously: You can try to get in on the payout as long as you were there and coughed some. Even if you didn’t try to brain a cop with a flagpole or beat him with his own riot shield!
If US District Judge Paul Bryon — an Obama appointee — grants the class action request, the filing includes a list of 35 potential winners who have filed tort claims and could be eligible to join the suit. Among them are:
Dominic Pezzola, a Proud Boy who ignited the breach of the Capitol itself when he smashed a window with a stolen riot shield and Christopher [Worrell], a Proud Boy who unleashed pepper spray at a line of police officers. Also on the list, pro-Trump livestreamer Anthime Gionet, who is better known by his moniker “Baked Alaska,” who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count. [Politico mispelled Worrell’s name — Dok]
Pezzola was tried along with other Proud Boys for seditious conspiracy, though he was only convicted on other charges. Yes, he’s also the guy who pleaded for leniency because he’s given up politics, and then yelled “TRUMP WON!” after he was sentenced. Worrell asked the judge in his case for mercy, saying his conduct on January 6 was “inexcusable and unjustified” and that he wanted police and members of Congress to know he was “truly sorry.” Then, just before his actual sentencing, he cut off his ankle monitor and ran away, and was only recaptured after a 10-week manhunt. (He faked a drug overdose to further delay sentencing.) Now he might be in for a big payout for help-help-I’m-bein’-repressed.
NBC News notes that the list also includes Joseph Fischer, a former Boston cop who was inside the Capitol and slammed a cop with a chair to help another rioter escape (but he was very sorry later).
Another on the list is Andrew Paul Johnson, one of the Great Patriots who went on to do new crimes after Trump pardoned them. Johnson was convicted in February of molesting two children, one under the age of 12, as well as other child sex crimes, and last month was sentenced to life in prison. He attempted to buy the silence of one of his victims by promising the child a share of the imaginary $10,000 payout he thought Trump would give him for being a J6 hero. If the class action is successful, we suppose Johnson’s prison commissary account will be well-stocked. (Yes, he’s a horrible human being. The commenting rules nonetheless apply.)
All told, some 46 people could become part of the class action claim for $18.4 million, at a start. But the complaint notes that the class could ultimately include “hundreds or potentially thousands of individuals,” because my goodness, those vastly outnumbered Capitol and DC cops sure were out of control for no reason at all. The complaint details the various crowd control devices that the police “indiscriminately” used against the mob of “peaceful, praying citizens exercising their First Amendment rights.”
In fact, the complaint insists, everything was just fine until the cops just jumped out of nowhere and started whaling on the innocent visitors to the Capitol. The protesters, we’re told, were
overwhelmingly peaceful before the shooting by police started. They were assembled on the grounds not engaging in violence. A small group of protesters were up along a temporary bike fence line and pushing several officers. No one intentionally harmed any officers
Remember how peaceful the protesters’ slight nudges against the bike fences were?
Those poor innocent lambs were brutalized by the cops they beat the shit out of, that’s for sure.
This is only the latest attempt by January 6 seditionists to profit from their attempt to overthrow the 2020 election; as we mention, Ashli Babbitt’s family got $5 million in a settlement last year. Several of the Proud Boys convicted of seditious conspiracy, including Pezzola and former leader Enrique Tarrio, sued the Justice Department last June for what they now claim was a “political prosecution” that was very very unfair. (The DOJ, surprisingly, is fighting that one.)
And in a separate case of a convicted Trump pal getting a nice payday for his loyalty, last week the Justice Department settled a lawsuit from Trump’s disgraced former national security guy Michael Flynn for $1.2 million. Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in its investigation of his palling around with a Russian diplomat, but Trump believed Flynn’s insistence that he was framed into lying to the agents (and into pleading guilty?) and pardoned him. Not a J6 case, but it has to be very encouraging for the plaintiffs in this new case, who presumably won’t need to worry about a judge or jury actually considering their bullshit claims because they expect Trump to give them a handsome settlement, and maybe a pension, the end.
[Politico / Complaint in Sullivan v. US / NBC News / AP]
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Sure. Why not?
This is just my reminder that "Blue Lives Matter" and "Back the Blue" are only true in the sense where police need to be defended when they extrajudicially execute Black people. That's part of the original slave patrol remit, after all.
Remember:
Blue Lives Matter
All Lives Matter
Back the Blue
All = Black Lives Don't Matter
and that when police interact with Black people, the Black people must be brutalized.
"Objective reality is just your opinion, man."