America’s great peddler of NFTs once again beckons supporters to his victimhood festival, as he anticipates several coming indictments. He tells them they must protest the workings of the nation’s legal system, “or you won’t have a country anymore.”
Certainly, a few Gravy Seals will show up, as will those who are waiting for their scooters to recharge. But most will stay home, having become “woke” to Donald Trump’s myths of a stolen election and a deep state.
Some of the better known cases of Jan. 6 defendants provide additional reasons that many MAGA folks, although they may vote for him once again, have come to understand that the country will go on, with or without Donald Trump.
Jan. 6 defendant Guy Wesley Reffitt had threatened his son and daughter with death if they spoke to authorities about him, his son testified. Reffitt had been armed with a handgun and zip ties as he battled police at the Capitol. He was convicted and sentenced to 87 months in federal prison. Who wants to be the next Guy Reffitt?
Thomas Robertson, a former Virginia police officer and Army veteran, bragged about his Jan. 6 violence on Facebook. Jurors saw video of him in action and convicted him of six crimes. He, too, was handed a sentence of 87 months.
Former New York City cop and Marine Corps vet Thomas Webster hammered at Capitol officers with a metal flagpole and tried to rip the gas mask off a DC Metro cop. Jurors concluded that the man was guilty. He was sentenced to 10 years.
The parade of the hornswoggled includes Devlin Thompson, Lonnie Leroy Coffman, Jacob Chansley (the “QAnon Shamon,”), Nicholas Languerand, Scott Kevin Fairlamb, Greg Rubenacker, Matthew Ray Miller and Cleveland Meredith. Their sentences range from 28 to 44 months, which seems rather lengthy if, like Tucker Carlson, you believe they were harmless tourists. In the interest of full disclosure, I have been a U.S. Capitol tourist a half dozen times and somehow managed to do it without toting bear spray or clobbering cops.
Julian Khater got 80 months. He’s the fellow who doused officer Brian Sicknick with bear spray which likely contributed to Sicknick’s death the next day. Inexplicably, the DC coroner reported that Sicknick died of natural causes, as if bear spray and three hours of grappling with criminals had been a tonic. Perhaps the bear spray fumes wafted from the officer’s body and went to the coroner’s head.
Larry Brock was the winner of 24 months in prison for his entry in the I-believed-in-Donald-Sweepstakes. In sentencing Brock, U.S. District Judge John Bates cited his crimes at the Capitol as well as his “chilling” rhetoric in the months leading up to the riot, including Brock saying “We need to execute the traitors who are trying to steal the election.” Trump couldn’t have said it better.
Presently awaiting sentencing following their convictions for seditious conspiracy, which carries as much as a 20 year stretch, are Oath Keepers Roberto Minuto, Joseph Hackett, David Moerschel, Edward Vallejo and Kelly Meggs. In court, they claimed that they were just following orders. Is it just me, or did their defense sound eerily similar to what was said at Nuremberg? The group’s leader, Stewart Rhodes, was convicted of the same crime.
Other Oath Keeper underlings, Jessica Watkins, Kenneth Harrleson, Thomas Caldwell, Sandra Parker, William Issacs, Laura Steele and Connie Meggs were convicted of attempting to stop the counting of the Electoral College votes. They also face hard time when they are sentenced.
All of them were played for fools by Donald Trump, as were the nearly 500 others also already found guilty, and 500 more who await trials and another thousand that the DOJ says are yet to be charged.
And now the former president distributes more applications for membership in the Chumps for Trump club.
Joseph Wyatt is a Gazette-Mail contributing columnist and emeritus professor at Marshall University. Reach him at wyatt@marshall.edu.
