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Zorro

(15,691 posts)
Thu Nov 18, 2021, 02:02 PM Nov 2021

Insurrectionists are finally receiving justice. But the GOP is more unhinged than ever.

Jacob Chansley — the most memorable figure in the Jan. 6 violent insurrection, and certainly the most bizarre given his painted face and horned cap — received 41 months in prison on Wednesday plus a $2,000 fine for obstructing the congressional certification. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kimberly L. Paschall made an impassioned plea, both in the courtroom and in her sentencing memo, for the stiff penalty.

In a direct rebuke to former president Donald Trump and his apologists, Paschall made clear at the hearing that Chansley was no peaceful protester. He stormed the Capitol, confronted police, entered the building through a broken window, charged to the dais in the Senate chamber, shouted a vulgar threat (“time’s up, motherf-----s!”) and left a threatening message for Vice President Mike Pence (“It’s only a matter of time. Justice is coming!”).

As Paschall argued in her sentencing memo, “The government cannot overstate the seriousness of the defendant’s conduct as a one [sic] of the most prominent figures of the historic riot on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. . . . The defendant’s consistent argument throughout this case that his actions on that day were peaceful is undermined by the evidence submitted to this Court, but demonstrative of a persistent mindset that could lead the defendant to commit similar acts again.”

She might have said the same of the person who inspired the attack: Trump. If Chansley was “quite literally, their flagbearer,” Trump had beaten the drum for weeks, spread the “big lie” about a stolen election, demanded his followers “stop the steal” (at the moment Congress was assembled to certify electoral college ballots), and then refused to come to the rescue of lawmakers and the vice president after protesters stormed the building.

https://wapo.st/3FnztVo

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