Accused Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty by a jury of his peers today, with NBC News reporting:
Rittenhouse was charged with reckless homicide in the slaying of Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and intentional homicide in the death of Anthony Huber, 26.
He also faced a charge of attempted intentional homicide for severely wounding Gaige Grosskreutz, a 27-year-old paramedic from suburban Milwaukee who was there that night volunteering his medical services, and two counts of recklessly endangering safety.
But Rittenhouse is not in the clear legally. He could still face federal charges, and the Justice Department is being called on review the case and see if he should be charged.
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, tweeted out a call for the DOJ to take a close look at Rittenhouse:
This heartbreaking verdict is a miscarriage of justice and sets a dangerous precedent which justifies federal review by DOJ. Justice cannot tolerate armed persons crossing state lines looking for trouble while people engage in First Amendment-protected protest. https://t.co/Uh95Uc1Ddo
Specifically, Rittenhouse could face being charged with federal civil rights violations and a hate crime. That decision will have to be made by the DOJ, and it could impact future cases of this type when protesters are targeted by those who disagree with them.
So while Kyle Rittenhouse may be in the clear for the moment, there’s a very good chance he’s going to be back in court very soon, and his luck will eventually run out.
Fox News host Maria Bartiromo got into an enraged shouting match with then-Attorney General William Barr because he refused to say there had been widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, according to a new book from Jonathan Karl that will be released on Tuesday.
CNN reports that Bartiromo was livid that Barr wouldn’t join the attempt by some in the Trump administration to delegitimize the results which clearly showed Joe Biden would be the next president:
“Betrayal,” by ABC’s chief Washington correspondent Jon Karl, highlights Bartiromo’s damaging role as a promoter of reckless lies about the election.
In the book, which comes out on Tuesday, Karl writes that “Bartiromo had once been a widely respected and trailblazing financial journalist. As a correspondent for CNBC, she was the first television reporter to report live from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Now she had her own show on Fox News and she was using it to boost a series of unfounded allegations designed to overturn a presidential election.”
Barr confirmed to Karl that the conversation with Bartiromo did indeed take place and that he refused to budge when she demanded he cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election:
“She called me up and she was screaming,” Barr told Karl on the record. “I yelled back at her. She’s lost it.”
Karl said he reached out to Bartiromo for a response, because, “after all, it’s highly inappropriate for a journalist to call the attorney general and demand he do something related to a criminal investigation.”
“Bartiromo did not respond,” Karl wrote, “but a Fox News spokesperson did get back to me and denied Barr’s account of the conversation on Bartiromo’s behalf.”
As we long suspected, Fox News and other right-wing media outlets such as Newsmax and One America News were all part of the larger conspiracy to stage a coup that would allow Trump to remain in power indefinitely. The riots at the Capitol on Jan. 6 were also part of that plot, and are being investigated by the House Select Committee.
Every single person who played any role in the attempt to destroy this republic and our representative democracy should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. That includes Maria Bartiromo, who should also be shown the door by Fox.
The wait is over for some of the people who participated in the January 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol which resulted in the deaths of five people, including a member of the Capitol Police Force.
CNN reports that the U.S. Department of Justice has begun handing down more criminal conspiracy charges against members of the group known as the Oath Keepers:
“The Justice Department has added four new defendants to the federal criminal conspiracy case against Oath Keepers who allegedly prepared for and took part in the US Capitol riot, according to a new indictment made public in DC District Court on Sunday.
“The newly named Oath Keeper defendants are Joseph Hackett, who went by ‘Ahab,’ Jason Dolan, who went by ‘Turmoil,’ and William Isaacs, all from Florida. A fourth new defendant’s name and alleged actions are still redacted.”
All of the Oath Keeper defendants are accused of taking part in a criminal conspiracy and entering the restricted Capitol grounds:
“Isaacs, for instance, allegedly yelled, ‘The fight’s not over’ once the Oath Keepers group had gotten inside the building, and he waved rioters down the hallway toward the Senate, according to the indictment.”
Additionally, five of the individuals already named as defendants are also facing charges of allegedly deleting their social media and cell phone activity, which could lead to them being convicted of obstruction of justice and other federal felonies.
The new court filings also lay out disturbing new details about how the Oath Keepers illegally attempted to smuggle weapons into Washington, D.C. for the Jan. 6 event:
“Department of Justice prosecutors were describing in court filings what else they’ve learned about the group’s so-called Quick Reaction Force, an effort to allegedly bring guns to a Northern Virginia Comfort Inn as backup for the siege.
“Previously, prosecutors had described how the Oath Keepers gathered and stashed weapons at the Comfort Inn, and how defendant Thomas Caldwell of Virginia allegedly had floated an idea of ferrying weapons across the Potomac River to assist with the Capitol siege.”
Before federal prosecutors are finished, many of the Oath Keeper defendants could well be facing charges that would put them in federal prison for the remained of their lives, a fitting punishment for anyone who dares to try and overthrow the elected representatives of the nation as they were going about their official duty of certifying the 2020 presidential election results.
Ironically, the Oath Keepers love to portray themselves as being devoted to the principle of defending the Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” But they’re nothing more than terrorist punks who deserve to rot behind bars.
A little over two weeks ago, you probably recall, the FBI raided the home and office of Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, seizing his electronic devices and sending a clear message that the former New York City mayor is on the Justice Department’s radar screen in a major way.
There are reports federal prosecutors already have evidence that proves Giuliani illegally took money from foreign governments such as Russia and Ukraine. If they can prove that, Rudy is looking at spending a few years in federal prison, which at his age could conceivably be a death sentence.
Now, however, we know now that the DOJ is investigating Giuliani for other, more serious crimes which also trace back to his connections in Ukraine.
On Wednesday, The Daily Beast reported that the feds are taking a long look at a dossier Giuliani had cooked up in an attempt to smear Joe Biden during the height of the 2020 election:
“In late 2019 during the Trump-Ukraine scandal, The New Yorker, which obtained a copy of the dossier, described one of its allegations as a byzantine conspiracy theory in which the U.S.-backed creation of NABU— Ukraine’s anti-corruption prosecutors—in 2014 was somehow a scheme concocted by Ambassador Yovanovitch and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent to prevent Ukraine from investigating the Bidens. In another allegation described by the magazine, the dossier casts right wing boogeyman and liberal philanthropist George Soros as the orchestrator of Yovanovitch’s appointment as U.S. ambassador in Kyiv.”
The dossier, however, did manage to make its rounds inside the Trump administration, where it was discussed and debated, then dismissed as worthless:
“According to one former Trump White House official, those in the White House who examined the pages and interview notes in 2019 almost across-the-board dubbed the research “amateurish” and unhelpful, with Trump officials discussing amongst themselves how they believed it was unlikely that anyone, foreign or American, would agree to pay Giuliani to produce this—if only because of the utterly shoddy nature of the work.”
The fact that none of those White House advisers reported Giuliani’s bogus dossier to the FBI or other law enforcement agency also places them in significant legal jeopardy. And it’s safe to assume they’ll be glad to sell out Rudy to save their own hides. Provided, that is, Giuliani doesn’t feed them to prosecutors first.
What a nasty mess Rudy and his pals have gotten themselves into. Here’s hoping they all go to prison for a very long time.