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WASHINGTON — Prosecutors want alleged Capitol rioter Douglas Jensen sent back to jail, accusing him in a new filing Thursday night of committing “egregious” violations of his pretrial release conditions not only by repeatedly accessing the internet but also by doing so specifically to watch election fraud conspiracy theory videos.

Jensen had been in jail for months following his arrest in January in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection. He’s accused of leading a mob of rioters who chased US Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman through the Capitol and of carrying a knife in his pocket at the time. In July, however, a judge agreed to release him over the government’s objection, imposing a strict set of conditions that Jensen had to follow if he wanted to go home.

 

Those conditions included a prohibition on using devices with internet access, including cell phones. But according to the government, 30 days after he was released from jail, a court officer assigned to check on him arrived at his house and found Jensen in his garage listening to news on a WiFi-connected iPhone through the video platform Rumble. The government didn’t say what exactly Jensen was listening to but included a link to a Washington Post article that described how the site was popular among conservatives.

More than that, though, the government described how Jensen also eventually admitted to the pretrial services officer that he’d spent two days watching a “cyber symposium” hosted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, one of the most prominent and prolific proponents of the election fraud conspiracy theories and lies that fueled the Jan. 6 riots.

Jensen was a self-described follower of the QAnon collective delusion, a fact that the government focused on in arguing to keep him behind bars. His lawyer had countered that Jensen realized the error of his ways after six months in jail, writing in June that “he feels deceived, recognizing that he bought into a pack of lies.”

The government said that the violation of his release conditions so soon after he’d left jail was proof that those earlier representations to the court were bogus, and that Jensen couldn’t be trusted to comply with court orders going forward.

“Jensen’s swift violation confirms what the Government and this Court suspected all along: that Jensen’s alleged disavowal of QAnon was just an act; that his alleged epiphany inside the D.C. Jail was merely self-advocacy; and that, at the end of the day, Jensen will not abandon the misguided theories and beliefs that led him to menacingly chase U.S. Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman up the Senate staircase on January 6, 2021,” Assistant US Attorney Hava Mirell wrote.

The fact that Jensen was watching Lindell’s symposium, which focused on promoting and bolstering voter fraud falsehoods and conspiracies, made the violations especially “egregious” in the government’s eyes.

“He has proven that not even six months in jail will deter him from returning to the conspiracy theories that led him to commit an assault against a federal officer on January 6, 2021. Contrary to what Jensen claimed at his bond hearing, he is still very much bought into QAnon’s ‘pack of lies,’” Mirell wrote.

The final problem for Jensen, the government said, is that his wife had agreed to serve as his third-party custodian and make sure he was following the rules. Not only did Jensen have access to an internet-connected device, the prosecutor wrote, but he also told the pretrial services officer that his wife had left the news on for him when she went to work the day that the officer found him in the garage — proof that she was an “unsuitable and untrustworthy custodian.” Absent an alternative, there was simply no one the court could trust to supervise him, Mirell wrote.

A lawyer for Jensen did not immediately return a request for comment. He is due to file a response early next week.

Ricky Gervais Lol GIF

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Wait, his wife left him in the garage while she went to work each day, but turned on the news for him so he'd be soother by the voices? 

Seriously?  Isn't that what people do with their dogs?  And this guy was in charge of a chalk group on Insurrection Day?

A guy who almost helped topple our government was left in the garage with Fox News on to calm him?  

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Just now, Lobo said:

Wait, his wife left him in the garage while she went to work each day, but turned on the news for him so he'd be soother by the voices? 

Seriously?  Isn't that what people do with their dogs?  And this guy was in charge of a chalk group on Insurrection Day?

A guy who almost helped topple our government was left in the garage with Fox News on to calm him?  

This surprises you......because?    

Dude, that's the most depressing thing about all of this.  It's not that our country and government are going to fall to a violent revolt -- they are, but what makes it so depressing is that it will be a revolt led by the most jaw-droppingly stupid, mouthbreathing, drooling morons you can imagine.  These are people you wouldn't hire to mop a floor, because they'd find a way to drown in the mop water.  And they are going to be our ruin.

All those fantasies about us maybe falling to a chisel-jawed rooskie military, with jets and tanks and shit?  Those were a head fake.  We're really going to fall to the people that Cletuses make fun of for being stupid.

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This surprises you......because?    
Dude, that's the most depressing thing about all of this.  It's not that our country and government are going to fall to a violent revolt -- they are, but what makes it so depressing is that it will be a revolt led by the most jaw-droppingly stupid, mouthbreathing, drooling morons you can imagine.  These are people you wouldn't hire to mop a floor, because they'd find a way to drown in the mop water.  And they are going to be our ruin.
All those fantasies about us maybe falling to a chisel-jawed rooskie military, with jets and tanks and shit?  Those were a head fake.  We're really going to fall to the people that Cletuses make fun of for being stupid.
You know...texags.
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On 8/19/2021 at 2:16 PM, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/19/politics/jenna-ryan-misdemeanor-capitol-riot/index.html

I think her tweet of I'm not going to jail because I'm blonde and white should absolutely be taken into account. Fuck her. Throw her ass in jail for a year.

A few months in jail and she wouldn’t be blonde anymore.

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Prosecutors have filed conspiracy charges against 40 of those defendants, alleging that they engaged in some degree of planning before the attack.

They alleged that one Proud Boy leader recruited members and urged them to stockpile bulletproof vests and other military-style equipment in the weeks before the attack and on Jan. 6 sent members forward with a plan to split into groups and make multiple entries to the Capitol.

But so far prosecutors have steered clear of more serious, politically-loaded charges that the sources said had been initially discussed by prosecutors, such as seditious conspiracy or racketeering.

The FBI's assessment could prove relevant for a congressional investigation that also aims to determine how that day's events were organized and by whom.

Senior lawmakers have been briefed in detail on the results of the FBI's investigation so far and find them credible, a Democratic congressional source said.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exclusive-fbi-finds-scant-evidence-us-capitol-attack-was-coordinated-sources-2021-08-20/

The scant evidence is the worry.

Edited by washparkhorn
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Seems like most of the morons who stormed the Capitol were, well…morons. They are like amoeba getting poked. Just reacting unthinkingly to stimulus. In this case, the stimulation being the President telling them to storm the Capitol. “Derp! Doh-Kay!”, said Cletus. And off he went into infamy.
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My point was, I think there is evidence to show that there absolutely was a plan.  The actions taken by folks in TFG's inner circle, meeting with some of these fucksticks, etc... shows preplanning.  Hell, the delays with the national guard that seems to come from the acting Sec Def, all of that should be taken into account.  That to me absolutely points to a bigger issue.  It is almost like the FBI isn't doing its job well on purpose.

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I'm morbidly curious how the next Capitol Rally/Riot on 18 September is going to "disguise" their identities.  Suddenly masks will become trendy.  Phones will left back at the hotel room/on the bus, but some dipshits will still bring theirs with them for photography but turned on Airplane Mode.  But I think their true brilliance posture will come in the form of none of them using one another's real names, "You hear that America?!?  We usin' CODE NAMES!!!!!"  

https://www.newsweek.com/police-dc-concerned-about-september-justice-rally-charged-capitol-rioters-1620751

Edited by Lobo
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1 hour ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

My point was, I think there is evidence to show that there absolutely was a plan.  The actions taken by folks in TFG's inner circle, meeting with some of these fucksticks, etc... shows preplanning.  Hell, the delays with the national guard that seems to come from the acting Sec Def, all of that should be taken into account.  That to me absolutely points to a bigger issue.  It is almost like the FBI isn't doing its job well on purpose.

That is a disturbing article for a whole multitude of reasons. It’s not coming out by accident. 

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For the government to either admit or try to prove there was a coordinated plan would either be an admission that the government is incompetent and should have discovered it earlier, or the government itself played a part in an attempt to overthrow democracy and therefore can no longer be trusted.
 

I suppose that outcome was always not realistic, but it’s disappointing. 

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41 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

For the government to either admit or try to prove there was a coordinated plan would either be an admission that the government is incompetent and should have discovered it earlier, or the government itself played a part in an attempt to overthrow democracy and therefore can no longer be trusted.

I suppose that outcome was always not realistic, but it’s disappointing. 

On the one hand, the vast majority of that crowd was just a bunch of morons who were wanting to show up for one last speech while Trump was in office and show they supported him.  They would have been extremely unpredictable in the eyes of intelligence/law enforcement, especially since the intelligence/law enforcement folks would not have expected Republican leadership to encourage them to actually start shit at the Capitol.  

On the other hand, there were clearly some very organized groups that took advantage of those folks, used them as shields/interference.  They seemed pretty small in numbers overall though, and based on their actions elsewhere, they were probably not going to 

This all circles back to the fact that if security had opened fire, the cosplaying morons would have fled for the hills, and the organized groups would have fled as soon as they lost their meat shield, and so nobody would be talking about anything being "coordinated".  

But they didn't open fire, and that's a major problem.  We all know that if it had been a bunch of brown people in robes screaming about jihad, that they would have been mowed down.

 

 

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3 hours ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

My point was, I think there is evidence to show that there absolutely was a plan.  The actions taken by folks in TFG's inner circle, meeting with some of these fucksticks, etc... shows preplanning.  Hell, the delays with the national guard that seems to come from the acting Sec Def, all of that should be taken into account.  That to me absolutely points to a bigger issue.  It is almost like the FBI isn't doing its job well on purpose.

Roger Stone would be suspect number one; it was likely THE reason he was pardoned.

 

2 hours ago, Pato del Muerto said:

I’d like to believe that the fbi is sharp enough to understand that just because 80% of the crowd wasn’t in on the plan, doesn’t mean that there was no plan or that they were not part of the plan. 

I'm not a fan of Chris Wray at all at all. I have similar concerns as M. Wheeler (aka Empty Wheel) in that Chris Wray and likely Jeffrey Rosen were witnesses to what transpired but have been dragging their feet the entire way.

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So the money to pay for the gathering prior to the insurrection was paid for by Trump's people?

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Trump Funding Network Paid $4.3 Million To People, Firms Who Set Up Jan. 6 Rally: Report

OpenSecrets tracked payments through federal records to actors who organized the protest that preceded the Capitol insurrection.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-funding-network-paid-millions-jan-6-rally-organizers-opensecrets_n_612d787fe4b09266434f6216

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5 minutes ago, Bullneck said:

So the money to pay for the gathering prior to the insurrection was paid for by Trump's people?

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-funding-network-paid-millions-jan-6-rally-organizers-opensecrets_n_612d787fe4b09266434f6216

This is why that recent article that came out where anonymous sources said the FBI had not found much evidence of coordination of the Capitol attack pissed me off so much. It was clearly designed to lay the groundwork for the FBI to not actually do its fucking job.
 

Reminded me of the “reports” of WMDs in Iraq in 2002. Just laying the mass media groundwork through bullshit. 

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On 8/21/2021 at 10:12 AM, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

My point was, I think there is evidence to show that there absolutely was a plan.  The actions taken by folks in TFG's inner circle, meeting with some of these fucksticks, etc... shows preplanning.  Hell, the delays with the national guard that seems to come from the acting Sec Def, all of that should be taken into account.  That to me absolutely points to a bigger issue.  It is almost like the FBI isn't doing its job well on purpose.

Exactly my thought. Have they even looked at the orders given by the White House to DOD?

If I recall correctly, the Guard's orders were to protect the protesters from Antifa and BLM.

This, military chain of command, is where the meat of the oyster lies. I don't know how difficult it would be for the FBI to investigate that. Is the military investigating this?

This is one of those instances where we are ill-served by TV news media. They choose an aspect of a story and focus only on that. Afghanistan is a wholesale disaster (incorrect). Covering war, the media report deaths of soldiers as casualties without including wounded which are also casualties. I guess they figure they have to keep things super simple for our dumb asses. Or, they're lazy and limited in vision themselves.

Here the story is Proud Boys, Trump's speech, prosecution of the mob. That's necessary but incomplete, as usual. Where is the story about the orders given and deliberations taken by the Pentagon? Beyond a few tantalating facts, the story seems to have been relegated.

But let's beat the Covid story to death with repeating panel shows saying the same thing over and over! It's hard to leave the studio and go find news. Real hard. Hope the Post or Times provide us with something!

I think this is the part where democracy dies in the dark. 

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On 8/21/2021 at 10:18 AM, Lobo said:

I'm morbidly curious how the next Capitol Rally/Riot on 18 September is going to "disguise" their identities.  Suddenly masks will become trendy.  Phones will left back at the hotel room/on the bus, but some dipshits will still bring theirs with them for photography but turned on Airplane Mode.  But I think their true brilliance posture will come in the form of none of them using one another's real names, "You hear that America?!?  We usin' CODE NAMES!!!!!"  

https://www.newsweek.com/police-dc-concerned-about-september-justice-rally-charged-capitol-rioters-1620751

Maybe we'll have soldiers prepared like they were for BLM.

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A U.S. Army unit stationed near Washington, D.C. was issued bayonets and live ammunition as a precaution amid widespread protesting and riots in recent weeks in the nation’s capital.

Maybe we can fly in the boys from Kent State.

spacer.png

Of course, you need that kind of force against your nigras and hippies not Proud Boys and Magats.

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The primary objective of Trump was clearly to get Congress to evacuate and delay the certification vote. They wanted to stoke fear and chaos. If something would happen violent, “that’d be a shame” and have plausible deniability.

What’s gonna be hard is getting through the dog whistles. Because Trump was just setting the stage. Actually, securing evidence of explicit instructions to attack police and storm the building will be difficult.

From Trump’s perspective, you just pay attention to the chatter and put the pieces in place to create chaos. How you prove criminal liability depends how dumb and explicit the official people were with the rabble.

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Some squirrelly shit is going on with the attorney of a bunch of the insurrectionists. He may, or may not, have the 'rona as first announced and briefly discussed in the political Covid thread.

Go-to Lawyer for Capitol Riot Defendants Disappears
John Pierce has been a combative advocate for those accused of participating in the Jan. 6 attack, but he’s missed court appearances for a week.

The mysterious disappearance of the lawyer John Pierce began last Tuesday, prosecutors say, when he missed a hearing for one of the many cases where he is representing a defendant in the Capitol riot investigation. The young associate who took his place said that Mr. Pierce had a “conflict.” At the time, no one seemed to give it much mind.

But in the days that followed, Mr. Pierce — who is defending more cases connected to the riot than any other lawyer — missed additional hearings and the reasons for his absence started changing.

On Wednesday, his associate told a judge in one case that Mr. Pierce had gotten Covid-19 and was in the hospital on a ventilator — but only after telling a prosecutor in another case that Mr. Pierce had been in a car accident. That same evening, a different associate told a reporter that Mr. Pierce had in fact been hospitalized, but was getting care for “dehydration and exhaustion.”

Finally, on Monday — after Mr. Pierce had still failed to emerge — the government got involved. Federal prosecutors issued letters to several judges in 17 Capitol riot cases, informing them that no one in the Justice Department had heard from Mr. Pierce in a week and that “multiple” phone numbers for his law firm appeared to have been disconnected.

His criminal cases had come to a “standstill,” the prosecutors said, endangering the rights of his clients. If Mr. Pierce did not surface soon, they added, something — though it was not clear what — would have to be done.

The New York Times tried to reach Mr. Pierce several times by text and phone in recent days, but he did not respond.

Spoiler

Mr. Pierce’s unexplained absence was only the latest twist in his outsized role in defending those accused of participating in the Capitol attack. His clients — among them members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers militia — have stood out not only for their number, but also for the scorched-earth battle that he has vowed to wage on their behalf.

A self-described pro-Trump populist, Mr. Pierce has promised, for example, to force the government to give him video footage of the Capitol for several days before and after Jan. 6, and has said he will demand information about every police officer working at the building that day. He has also vowed to subpoena hostile witnesses like Speaker Nancy Pelosi, ostensibly to learn what she may have known about security at the Capitol before the attack.

Without citing evidence, Mr. Pierce has said he intends to implicate the F.B.I. and the intelligence community by showing that the riot was something like a grand act of entrapment or an inside job. He has often talked about his cases with a conspiratorial zeal, painting himself as something like a lonely legal warrior out to save his clients from an overreaching government.

“I’m like Gerard Butler in ‘300,’” Mr. Pierce said in an interview before dropping out of sight, comparing himself to the action star who played a Spartan king. “I’m in the hot gates at Thermopylae, holding the pass against the million-man Persian army.”

While the government has not yet weighed in on the merits on his claims, prosecutors did express concern in their letters filed on Monday about the young associate, Ryan Joseph Marshall, who has been standing in for Mr. Pierce at the hearings he has missed.

For one thing, Mr. Marshall is not a licensed lawyer, prosecutors said, and has taken actions on behalf of clients “that he is not permitted” to take. Moreover, they went on, it remains unclear if and when Mr. Marshall will be able to get his law license given that he is under indictment in two criminal cases accusing him of corruption, theft and fraud in Pennsylvania.

Mr. Pierce’s situation is not his first encounter with personal and professional setbacks. Last year, his law firm nearly collapsed in a swirl of debts and resignations. Then his most prominent client, Kyle Rittenhouse, the young man charged with murder at a racial justice protest in Wisconsin last year, fired him in a highly public spat that included allegations that a charity arranged for the defense had engaged in financial improprieties.

His work in the Capitol cases began just after the attack when he took several members of the far-right nationalist group the Proud Boys as clients. He has also been hired by L. Brent Bozell IV, the son of a prominent conservative commentator, as well as by a Florida pastor and a Minnesota pub worker.

In recent weeks, however, at least two clients have fired Mr. Pierce, complaining that he seemed unresponsive and appeared at times to be unversed in the details of their cases. Last week,  the wife of yet another client, Kenneth Harrelson, a member of the Oath Keepers from Florida, sent a letter to her friends and associates, complaining that her husband was having “issues” getting Mr. Pierce “to do his job.”

Such complaints have come atop concerns that the sheer number of Mr. Pierce’s clients has exposed him to accusations of conflict of interest. He is, for example, representing both James Cusick Jr., the Florida pastor, and Mr. Cusick’s son Casey, who are charged with breaching the Capitol with another of his clients, David J. Lesperance, a member of the Cusicks’ church.

In a separate case, Mr. Pierce has been hired by another father-and-son pair, Kevin and Nathaniel Tuck, two former Florida police officers who have been charged in an indictment with a Florida Proud Boy he also represents.

Almost eight months after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, two separate processes have been taking place in Washington. In one, the Justice Department has been filing charges resulting in nearly 600 criminal cases that have only begun to delve into the violence of Jan. 6. In another, conservatives have been waging a war of narratives, playing down the attack as the work of mere tourists or calling it a false-flag operation by the F.B.I.

Mr. Pierce has placed himself at the nexus of these efforts. While he has filed motions and — before his absence — appeared at hearings like any other lawyer, he has also maintained a steady presence on social media and right-wing media outlets, questioning the “Stasi-like tactics” of the F.B.I., teasing purported revelations about the fatal shooting of Ashli Babbitt inside the Capitol and attacking the investigation as political persecution.

Perhaps the best example of this is his plan to raise a so-called public authority defense for some of his clients, arguing that they cannot be held accountable for the Capitol attack because they were following official U.S. policy.

But Mr. Pierce will most likely not point to the role that former President Donald J. Trump had in whipping up supporters to storm the building. Instead, he has said that he believes that F.B.I. operatives and intelligence personnel, working undercover, incited the crowd to violence. And he has urged other defense lawyers to help him find proof.

All of that, of course, can only come to pass if he returns to court — and the government seems worried that might never happen.

“Unfortunately, it seems that Mr. Pierce may be hospitalized and unable to communicate,” prosecutors wrote on Monday, “and it is unclear when Mr. Pierce will recover.”

 

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Please tell me this is not gonna result in a bunch of mistrials?  Buncha dumbasses give counsel Covid-19 on purpose so they can go free while awaiting new arraignment? 

Edited by Lobo
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2 hours ago, bolverk said:

Some squirrelly shit is going on with the attorney of a bunch of the insurrectionists. He may, or may not, have the 'rona as first announced and briefly discussed in the political Covid thread.

Go-to Lawyer for Capitol Riot Defendants Disappears
John Pierce has been a combative advocate for those accused of participating in the Jan. 6 attack, but he’s missed court appearances for a week.

The mysterious disappearance of the lawyer John Pierce began last Tuesday, prosecutors say, when he missed a hearing for one of the many cases where he is representing a defendant in the Capitol riot investigation. The young associate who took his place said that Mr. Pierce had a “conflict.” At the time, no one seemed to give it much mind.

But in the days that followed, Mr. Pierce — who is defending more cases connected to the riot than any other lawyer — missed additional hearings and the reasons for his absence started changing.

On Wednesday, his associate told a judge in one case that Mr. Pierce had gotten Covid-19 and was in the hospital on a ventilator — but only after telling a prosecutor in another case that Mr. Pierce had been in a car accident. That same evening, a different associate told a reporter that Mr. Pierce had in fact been hospitalized, but was getting care for “dehydration and exhaustion.”

Finally, on Monday — after Mr. Pierce had still failed to emerge — the government got involved. Federal prosecutors issued letters to several judges in 17 Capitol riot cases, informing them that no one in the Justice Department had heard from Mr. Pierce in a week and that “multiple” phone numbers for his law firm appeared to have been disconnected.

His criminal cases had come to a “standstill,” the prosecutors said, endangering the rights of his clients. If Mr. Pierce did not surface soon, they added, something — though it was not clear what — would have to be done.

The New York Times tried to reach Mr. Pierce several times by text and phone in recent days, but he did not respond.

  Reveal hidden contents

Mr. Pierce’s unexplained absence was only the latest twist in his outsized role in defending those accused of participating in the Capitol attack. His clients — among them members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers militia — have stood out not only for their number, but also for the scorched-earth battle that he has vowed to wage on their behalf.

A self-described pro-Trump populist, Mr. Pierce has promised, for example, to force the government to give him video footage of the Capitol for several days before and after Jan. 6, and has said he will demand information about every police officer working at the building that day. He has also vowed to subpoena hostile witnesses like Speaker Nancy Pelosi, ostensibly to learn what she may have known about security at the Capitol before the attack.

Without citing evidence, Mr. Pierce has said he intends to implicate the F.B.I. and the intelligence community by showing that the riot was something like a grand act of entrapment or an inside job. He has often talked about his cases with a conspiratorial zeal, painting himself as something like a lonely legal warrior out to save his clients from an overreaching government.

“I’m like Gerard Butler in ‘300,’” Mr. Pierce said in an interview before dropping out of sight, comparing himself to the action star who played a Spartan king. “I’m in the hot gates at Thermopylae, holding the pass against the million-man Persian army.”

While the government has not yet weighed in on the merits on his claims, prosecutors did express concern in their letters filed on Monday about the young associate, Ryan Joseph Marshall, who has been standing in for Mr. Pierce at the hearings he has missed.

For one thing, Mr. Marshall is not a licensed lawyer, prosecutors said, and has taken actions on behalf of clients “that he is not permitted” to take. Moreover, they went on, it remains unclear if and when Mr. Marshall will be able to get his law license given that he is under indictment in two criminal cases accusing him of corruption, theft and fraud in Pennsylvania.

Mr. Pierce’s situation is not his first encounter with personal and professional setbacks. Last year, his law firm nearly collapsed in a swirl of debts and resignations. Then his most prominent client, Kyle Rittenhouse, the young man charged with murder at a racial justice protest in Wisconsin last year, fired him in a highly public spat that included allegations that a charity arranged for the defense had engaged in financial improprieties.

His work in the Capitol cases began just after the attack when he took several members of the far-right nationalist group the Proud Boys as clients. He has also been hired by L. Brent Bozell IV, the son of a prominent conservative commentator, as well as by a Florida pastor and a Minnesota pub worker.

In recent weeks, however, at least two clients have fired Mr. Pierce, complaining that he seemed unresponsive and appeared at times to be unversed in the details of their cases. Last week,  the wife of yet another client, Kenneth Harrelson, a member of the Oath Keepers from Florida, sent a letter to her friends and associates, complaining that her husband was having “issues” getting Mr. Pierce “to do his job.”

Such complaints have come atop concerns that the sheer number of Mr. Pierce’s clients has exposed him to accusations of conflict of interest. He is, for example, representing both James Cusick Jr., the Florida pastor, and Mr. Cusick’s son Casey, who are charged with breaching the Capitol with another of his clients, David J. Lesperance, a member of the Cusicks’ church.

In a separate case, Mr. Pierce has been hired by another father-and-son pair, Kevin and Nathaniel Tuck, two former Florida police officers who have been charged in an indictment with a Florida Proud Boy he also represents.

Almost eight months after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, two separate processes have been taking place in Washington. In one, the Justice Department has been filing charges resulting in nearly 600 criminal cases that have only begun to delve into the violence of Jan. 6. In another, conservatives have been waging a war of narratives, playing down the attack as the work of mere tourists or calling it a false-flag operation by the F.B.I.

Mr. Pierce has placed himself at the nexus of these efforts. While he has filed motions and — before his absence — appeared at hearings like any other lawyer, he has also maintained a steady presence on social media and right-wing media outlets, questioning the “Stasi-like tactics” of the F.B.I., teasing purported revelations about the fatal shooting of Ashli Babbitt inside the Capitol and attacking the investigation as political persecution.

Perhaps the best example of this is his plan to raise a so-called public authority defense for some of his clients, arguing that they cannot be held accountable for the Capitol attack because they were following official U.S. policy.

But Mr. Pierce will most likely not point to the role that former President Donald J. Trump had in whipping up supporters to storm the building. Instead, he has said that he believes that F.B.I. operatives and intelligence personnel, working undercover, incited the crowd to violence. And he has urged other defense lawyers to help him find proof.

All of that, of course, can only come to pass if he returns to court — and the government seems worried that might never happen.

“Unfortunately, it seems that Mr. Pierce may be hospitalized and unable to communicate,” prosecutors wrote on Monday, “and it is unclear when Mr. Pierce will recover.”

 

Yeah I saw that.  Guy is a complete shitbag.  Been in litigation with partners for years, had to withdraw from Rittenhouse over connection to shady funding drives.

https://sunlight-reports.com/never-grew-up/

He left Quinn Emmanuel (extreme hot shit litigation firm) to head up K/L Gates' litigation department for $2.5M/year and was shitcanned in four months for assaulting a coworker.

image-199.png?w=626&ssl=1

I'd say odds are excellent that he's dead, Jim.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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16 hours ago, bolverk said:

Sounds like the type to fake Covid and skip town. Holy shit.

Years ago I was working out a plot device for a story where a guy, running from Big Crime Enemies, hides in some podunk town jail for a month by busting a window or something while appearing drunk and having no ID. Then naturally not paying any fines so he could stay locked up under his new name. I don't know if it would work because I am very lazy and never finished it.

But now I wonder if it would be all that hard to fake getting stuck inside some harassed Covid ward. Nobody can go in and look for you. The records wouldn't match, but hey.

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