Authored by Julie Kelly by way of AmGreatness.com,

As judges hand down one absurd sentence after one other, one is perhaps inclined to giggle on the absurdity of all of it besides, after all, it’s not humorous…

The Division of Justice rigorously crafted the dramatic second in court docket.

A federal prosecutor handed an enclosed paper bag to an FBI agent answerable for investigating members of the Proud Boys, now on trial for seditious conspiracy associated to their participation within the occasions of January 6. The bag contained “proof of the illegal entry of the USA Capitol on January 6, 2021 and proof of the disruption to the certification of the 2020 presidential election,” FBI Particular Agent Elizabeth D’Angelo informed assistant U.S. Legal professional Nadia Moore on Wednesday.

D’Angelo cautiously pulled the proof out of the bag to current to the jury.

Spectators in D.C. District Court docket Choose Timothy Kelly’s courtroom have been on the sting of their seats. What would the thriller bag reveal?

Wouldn’t it disclose the group’s intricate however failed plot to overthrow the federal government? An in depth checklist of weapons the “seditionists” deliberate to make use of in service of their dastardly deed? Names of focused officers?

A nervous hush fell over the room; sweat beads shaped on furrowed brows. Lastly, the large second arrived.

It was—a set of problem cash.

Moore: Are you able to give a quick description of what they’re?

D’Angelo: They’re problem cash. This one is black and gold—and this bundle accommodates 4 black and gold coloured problem cash.

Moore: Are these the identical cash that have been seized from Zachary Rehl’s house?

D’Angelo: Sure.

What?

Like many organizations, the Proud Boys produce cash that depict the group’s motto and perspective. When a number of armed FBI brokers raided Rehl’s Philadelphia residence in March 2021, terrorizing his pregnant spouse and pillaging his house, investigators discovered not one however a number of such cash.

Prosecutors, nevertheless, didn’t clarify how Rehl and his co-defendants—additionally present in possession of incriminating problem cash throughout related SWAT raids—deployed the damaging fake forex that day. (One model included a picture of a Pokemon character, apparently an insurrectionist himself.)

Did the Proud Boys hurl the trinkets at officers clad in full riot gear outdoors the Capitol? Did they open locked doorways with the cash? Did they use the cash to bribe “election deniers” in Congress?

In any case, no weapons have been recovered at Rehl’s home. So what provides?

Nobody is aware of. Choose Kelly, a Trump appointee, final month insisted the cash have been admissible proof to point out a “relationship” among the many defendants. 

Welcome to the judicial funhouse formally referred to as the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse—a maze of distortions created by authorities clowns and ghouls supposed to frighten these trapped inside its confines whereas amusing others behind the scenes. Wednesday’s embarrassing spectacle is simply a tiny glimpse into the charade unfolding each day within the coronary heart of the nation’s capital.

Contemplate only a few latest occasions. Final week, kinfolk of the late Brian Sicknick have been allowed to learn “sufferer influence” statements within the sentencing of Julian Khater, the person accused of spraying Sicknick with pepper spray on January 6. Though Sicknick didn’t die on account of the spray—the coroner concluded he died of two strokes brought on by a blood clot—Sicknick’s quick relations proceed responsible Khater for Sicknick’s passing, disproven claims nonetheless given the court docket’s imprimatur.

Sicknick’s former girlfriend was allowed to take part within the stunt, despite the fact that she admitted the couple was on a “break” months earlier than the Capitol protest. Dozens of Capitol Law enforcement officials additionally attended the listening to. The theatrics labored. Choose Thomas Hogan ordered Khater to serve 80 months in jail.

A D.C. jury on January 23 returned all responsible verdicts within the trial of Richard Barnett, the person photographed along with his ft on a desk in Nancy Pelosi’s workplace that afternoon. It took jurors lower than two hours to convict Barnett on eight counts together with obstruction and civil dysfunction. He faces many years in jail.

The identical day, 4 males have been discovered responsible of seditious conspiracy and different critical crimes tied to January 6. Alleged members of the Oath Keepers entered the Capitol an hour after Congress had evacuated the constructing, carried no weapons, stayed for lower than quarter-hour, and vandalized nothing inside—a humiliating failure to overthrow democracy.

Nonetheless, Matthew Graves, the U.S. legal professional for the District of Columbia dealing with each prison case, bragged about his workplace’s victory. 

“For the second time in latest months, a jury has discovered {that a} group of Individuals entered right into a seditious conspiracy towards the USA,” Graves boasted.

“The purpose of this conspiracy was to stop the execution of our legal guidelines that govern the peaceable switch of energy—putting on the very coronary heart of our democracy. We’re grateful to the considerate, deliberative work of this jury who gave weeks of their lives to rigorously take into account and ship justice on this case and in so doing reaffirmed our democratic ideas.” 

(Every week later, Graves charged a California physician who tried to save lots of Ashli Babbitt’s life with 4 misdemeanors together with “parading” within the Capitol.)

The jury over which Graves swooned deliberated lower than two days in a case corresponding to treason.

“You’re entitled to your political opinions however to not an riot. You have been an insurrectionist.”

So mentioned Choose Colleen Kollar-Kotelly through the February 1 sentencing listening to for Daniel Caldwell, a Marine veteran who pleaded responsible to spraying cops on January 6. Caldwell spent 19 months in pretrial detention earlier than accepting the federal government’s plea provide final September. By tears, in accordance to Politico’s Kyle Cheney, Caldwell begged Kollar-Kotelly, a Clinton appointee, for mercy.

She gave none.

Explaining how her harsh sentence should “fortify towards the revolutionary fervor that you simply and others felt on January 6 and should still really feel immediately,” Kollar-Kotelly sentenced Caldwell to 68 months in jail.

“Rebel isn’t and can’t ever be warranted,” she lectured a person neither charged with nor convicted of riot.

However maybe nobody higher represents the warped creativeness of the prosecutors and judges overseeing January 6 circumstances higher than Tanya Chutkan. The Obama appointee is understood for handing down the stiffest punishment towards Trump supporters, ordering nonviolent protesters accused of low degree offenses to serve time in jail even when the federal government recommends none. And he or she’s on a roll.

Clearly agitated that Russell Alford, an Alabama man charged with the 4 most typical misdemeanors in January 6 circumstances, selected to go to trial as a substitute of settle for the federal government’s plea provide, Chutkan scolded Alford for his 11-minute peaceable jaunt by the Capitol. “You could have not been breaking any glass, however make no mistake, that wouldn’t have been a mob with out you,” Chutkan informed Alford, convicted on all 4 counts final October after the jury spent just a few hours contemplating his destiny. “You helped terrorize the true Patriots attempting to satisfy their obligation.”

Insisting she was not penalizing Alford for exercising his constitutional proper to demand a jury trial—the primary jury trial in Chutkan’s courtroom since each different January 6 defendant, clearly conscious of her repute, has accepted plea offers—Chutkan commenced to take action, commenting on the variety of attorneys on either side concerned within the trial and the jurors’ time. “The identical system you’re railing towards labored.”

Whereas acknowledging Alford has no prison document, Chutkan defined her ruling should act as “normal deterrence” to warn others that the punishment for future insurrections can be “sure, swift, and critical.”

She then sentenced Alford to 12 months in jail, one month lower than the Justice Division instructed. (Prosecutors requested for 13 months and accused Alford of spreading “disinformation” concerning the killing of Ashli Babbitt.) Her sentence is the longest imposed but for a Trump supporter discovered responsible of 4 misdemeanors.

One is perhaps inclined to giggle on the absurdity of all of it besides, after all, it’s not humorous. Lives are being systematically destroyed to the plain pleasure and gratification of taxpayer-paid attorneys and judges, who’re the one ones smiling. Sadly for a lot of harmless Individuals, this theater of the absurd seems for now to be on a limiteless run.