Daily Archives: August 26, 2021

1. Even Amid a Crackdown, the Proud Boys Are Still Agitating  The New York Times
2. A Proud Boys Leader Who Burned A Black Lives Matter Flag Gets 5 Months In Jail  NPR
3. Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio sentenced to 5 months in prison on weapons and vandalism charges  CBS News
4. Proud Boys leader Henry 'Enrique' Tarrio sentenced to five months in jail  The Washington Post
5. Proud Boys Leader Now Says He's Not Proud of His Crimes Mother Jones  Mother Jones
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

Read more from the original source:

Even Amid a Crackdown, the Proud Boys Are Still Agitating - The New York Times

By Marshall Cohen and Sara Sidner | CNN

Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was sentenced Monday to more than five months in jail for burning a churchs Black Lives Matter banner in December and bringing high-capacity rifle magazines to Washington, DC, days before the US Capitol insurrection.

The decision was handed down Monday by Judge Harold L. Cushenberry Jr. of DC Superior Court. Even though Tarrio was not in Washington on the day of the January 6 insurrection, the judge said Tarrios preceding conduct in the nations capital undermined American democracy.

This court must respect the right of any citizen to peacefully assemble, protest, and make his or her views known on issues, Cushenberry said. But Mr. Tarrios conduct in these criminal cases vindicate none of these democratic values. Instead, Mr. Tarrios actions betrayed them.

Tarrio, who has led the far-right extremist organization since 2018, pleaded guilty in July to the two misdemeanors. Federal prosecutors had asked the judge to give Tarrio three months in jail.

The flag-burning incident occurred at the Asbury United Methodist Church, a historically Black church, on December 12, after Tarrio and other Proud Boys attended a pro-Trump rally in Washington that later led to violent clashes. He was arrested when he returned to DC on January 4, shortly before the Capitol insurrection, and was found with two high-capacity magazines that are banned under DCs strict gun control laws.

After his arrest, he was released but ordered to stay out of DC a move that senior Justice Department officials later said was intended to tamp down potential violence on January 6.

In a letter to the judge ahead of sentencing, the churchs senior pastor said the flag-burning incident traumatized many of her congregants and brought back visions of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan (and) cross burnings.

The pastor, the Rev. Dr. Ianther M. Mills, also spoke passionately during Mondays sentencing hearing about the long-term impact of Tarrios actions, condemning them as brazenly racist.

She said Tarrio led a marauding band of angry white men apparently looking for trouble through the streets of DC, adding, in our opinion, this was an act of intimidation and racism.

During the hearing, Tarrio apologized directly to the churchs pastor and said he made a grave mistake by burning the Black Lives Matter banner and later gloating about it on social media. His attorney asked the judge to sentence Tarrio to community service instead of incarceration.

Id like to profusely apologize for my actions what I did was wrong, Tarrio sad.

But the far-right figure also painted himself as a victim of the situation, telling the judge, I have suffered financially, socially, for what Ive done. My familys business has been hit pretty hard. So, what I did doesnt only affect the church. It affects a lot more people, including my family.

The judge later concluded that Tarrios apology wasnt credible and rejected Tarrios claim that he didnt know he was destroying church property, calling it a bald, self-serving assertion.

He could not have cared less about the laws of the District of Columbia, the judge said. He cared about himself and self-promotion His claim of innocent mistake is not credible at all.

The case against Tarrio played out in local DC court and is separate from the sprawling federal investigation into the January 6 insurrection during which dozens of Proud Boys stormed the building and have since been charged with conspiracy and other felonies.

As part of the plea agreement, the Justice Department explicitly said it can bring different (and) additional charges against Tarrio regarding the attack on the Capitol. Its clear from court filings that prosecutors are aggressively investigating the Proud Boys and their actions before, during and after the January 6 riot. But its unclear if Tarrio will ever be charged as part of that probe.

Tarrio criticizes the sentence

In an interview with CNN after the hearing, Tarrio said the punishment was fair but criticized the judge, who at first mistakenly gave Tarrio a longer jail term than is legally allowed on the weapons charge, and was forced to adjust the sentence twice before the proceedings ended.

Im not surprised with the sentence per se. I am surprised by the judge, Tarrio said. I feel like the judge already had his mind made up. At its most basic function, a judge is supposed to know what the person in front of him was charged with. And in my case, he did not.

If I would have known it would have happened like this, I would have gone to trial, he said, predicting that he would have beaten the property destruction charge, even though it was caught on video and he repeatedly and publicly claimed responsibility for the banner-burning.

I learned from this experience, Tarrio said. If anyone thinks putting me in chains silencing me, dehumanizing me will keep me quiet, they are wrong. In fact, I will use my voice even more. Even the people who disagree with me, like Black Lives Matter, see the injustice in the justice system and I hope they keep up the fight because I sure as hell will.

Tarrio told CNN he would turn himself in on September 6.

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Proud Boys leader sentenced to more than five months - Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

With less than 72 hours before Proud Boys and other far-right groups are slated to converge in downtown Portland for an annual rally that has historically devolved into violent street brawls with local anti-fascists, city officials and the Portland Police Bureau have provided scant details of their planned response.

The Police Bureau is actively planning for the weekend and will have information to share tomorrow, bureau spokesman Lt. Greg Pashley said.

The mayors office, too, declined to immediately provide details about the planned law enforcement response, such as whether Portland police will be joined by other area law enforcement like Oregon State Police and Multnomah County sheriffs deputies.

Tomorrow, however, should hopefully bring clarity: Mayor Ted Wheeler and Police Chief Chuck Lovell are hosting a press conference Friday afternoon to address the upcoming rally. That press conference follows an 11 am event hosted by Wheeler called Choose Love: A Community Gathering to Denounce Hate and Violence in Portland.

Larger questions also loom about what, exactly, PPBs response will look like now that the Rapid Response Teamtasked with covering mass gatheringsdissolved in June. The team, Portlands riot squad, was often tasked with keeping dueling political groups separate. That said, it is unclear what impact the units dissolution might have: While the 50-or-so RRT officers resigned en masse from the unit, they still remain employed by the Police Bureau.

The upcoming rally cannot be a surprise to local officials. For weeks, far-right groups have been actively posting about it online. And the same event took place on the same day last yearAug. 22.

Portland has regularly been a targetsome say a training groundfor extremists wishing to prove their mettle in street combat. Since 2017, city officials have tried different responsessome effective, others woefully inadequate.

The 2020 event, billed as a No to Marxism in America rally, escalated into violent skirmishes as Portland police, for the most part, stood by. As WW reported last summer, the Police Bureau made no effort to apprehend known Proud Boy Tusitala Tiny Toese, who at the time had an active warrant out for his arrest.

And last September, about a month after last years gathering, law enforcement arrested Alan Swinneyanother Proud Boys memberdue to to his actions at the Aug. 22 protest and another gathering that month.

During the Aug. 22 gathering, Swinney allegedly pointed a loaded revolver at a counterprotester. The 51-year-old, who is still held in the Multnomah County Inverness Jail pending trial, faces charges for assault, unlawful use of tear gas, unlawful use of a weapon, and more.

Last summers clashes occurred in the build-up to the November election, as violent support for President Donald Trump mounted. It culminated in the invasion of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

In the aftermath of the failed insurrection, clashes between Proud Boys and anti-fascists have occurred sporadically this summermost recently on the weekend of Aug. 7, around an evangelical Christian worship service in Tom McCall Waterfront Park.

Excerpt from:

Three Days Ahead of Portland Proud Boys Gathering, Practical Details of Police Response Remain a Mystery - Willamette Week

A member of the far-right Proud Boys street gang is pleading with authorities to release him from jail on health grounds.

Christopher Worrell has been held since April on charges of pepper spraying a police officer during the 6 January riot at the US Capitol. But authorities have twice denied his petitions for pretrial release, arguing his claims that hes not getting cancer treatment for his are misleading.

"I have another court hearing coming up soon, and were hoping the courts are going to see, but, you know, theyre just, theyre mistreating me," the 49-year-old said in a jailhouse phone interview with Newsmax host Greg Kelly on Tuesday. "They promised me treatment way back in April, and yet here I am, still 166 days later with no treatment, so thats our plan and our hope that the courts have a little bit of compassion, let me go home to get some medical urgent medical treatment that I need."

Mr Worrell, who was arrested in March in his East Naples, Florida, home, has non-Hodgkins lymphoma cancer, and claims he hasnt gotten proper treatment in jail. He also contracted Covid while in detention, and claims that the cancer leaves him immunocompromised and at higher risk of health problems.

"Given the pandemic and acute danger to Mr Worrell, his continued detention amounts to impermissible pretrial punishment," his attorney, Allen Orenberg, wrote earlier this year. "The Governments interest in securing his appearance at trial does not outweigh his liberty interest in remaining alive and free from harm."

Mr Worrell has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him, telling Mr Kelly they were completely false and fabricated.

But courts have twice denied the Proud Boys requests to be released, citing the fact that he didnt wear a mask to the riot itself, as well as noting that he has received cancer treatment while behind bars.

"Contrary to defendants characterizations, the record reflects that he has received attentive medical care for his non-Hodgkins lymphoma, COVID-19, and other ailments while in custody," US District Court Judge Royce Lamberth wrote in June, denying one of the petitions for release.

Authorities have also noted that Unity Healthcare, the healthcare provider inside Washington, DC jails, hasnt noted that Mr Worrells condition is deteriorating, and prosecutors have previously argued that the Proud Boy isnt getting his meds because his doctor wasnt responding to messages from his prison health providers to authorise the treatment.

Prosecutors also argued for his continued detention ahead of trial because he allegedly threatened a witness in the case, posting a message on social media that read, SO WHOMEVER CALLED THE FEDS ON ME REST ASSURED I KNOW WHO YOU ARE AND WE WILL BE DISCUSSING THIS SOON!!"

Nearly 600 people have been arrested in connection with the 6 January insurrection so far.

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Proud Boy arrested in 6 January riot wants medical release from prison: Let me go home - The Independent

Kavanaugh claimed to be "a neutral and impartial arbiter who favors no litigant or policy." Barrett claimed, "I'm just here to apply the law." Needless to say, progressives were not convinced. When Joe Biden was elected, there was even a brief flare-up of discourse about Democrats embracing court-packing to counter the far-right Court with Biden even appointing a commission to study the question.

But it is a truism in mainstream media that progressives are always "overreacting," a truism that persists despite events like the January 6 insurrection, which conclusively proved #resistance folks had a better read on Trump than the "it can't happen here" naysayers. So all it took was the Roberts court issuing a couple of early summer moderate decisions the biggest saving the Affordable Care Act and voila! The Beltway media went full bore scolding the left for supposedly overreacting to the Trumpist court.

"The Supreme Court's Newest Justices Produce Some Unexpected Results," declared the New York Times, with a subheadline gushing how "liberals are often on the winning side."

"The Supreme Court's Surprising Term," read a similar New Yorker headline, with a subheadline promising that "the Court has largely avoided partisanship."

"Supreme Court this session saw strong majorities that did not adhere to the Trump brand or even the agenda of the far right," declared U.S. News & World Report.

"Ideological lines turn out to be more fluid than partisans had imagined when Barrett was named," claimed a headline in the Wall Street Journal.

And so on and so forth and on and on. The media narrative was set: Liberals are hysterical, the Supreme Court is fair, and gosh, let's just stop all this talk about court-packing already!

Now, the heat is off, and it appears the Republican majority on the Supreme Court feels free to do exactly what they were appointed to do: Impose their far-right ideology on an unwilling public and trample all good-faith legal reasoning and precedent to do so.

On Tuesday night, in a shockingly incoherent decision, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling by a Trump-appointed far-right judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk, forcing the Biden administration to keep Trump's hateful "remain in Mexico" policy towards refugees applying for political asylum. Biden may be the duly elected president, but it appears this Trump appointee-heavy Republican court still thinks Trump should be setting immigration policy.

It is hard to even measure how radical this decision is. It is a sign that having secured a media narrative of "moderation" the Court feels free to stomp all over legal norms and basic rationality in order to impose a right-wing agenda. As Ian Millhiser at Vox wrote, the decision implies the Biden administration "committed some legal violation when it rescinded a Trump-era immigration policy, but it does not identify what that violation is." So the Biden administration is now being forced into a policy it doesn't want, based on legal reasoning that is not even available to them.

Mark Joseph Stern of Slate tweeted some more points about how radical this is:

While noting the order "was only one paragraph," University of Wyoming law professor Stephen Feldman and author of "Pack the Court!: A Defense of Supreme Court Expansion" told Salon, "the six-to-three political split along conservative-progressive lines is worrisome."

He added: "If one is looking for evidence of political balance and moderation from the conservative Supreme Court justices, including Trump's three nominees, this decision does not provide it."

This decision is a disaster on its own, on two levels.

First is the basic human cost of forcing refugees most of whom have made the long trip from Central America to avoid persecution at the hands of gangs to remain in Mexico, where they are in immediate danger from predatory criminals exploiting their vulnerability. Then there's the bureaucratic disaster for the Biden administration, who is now stuck with being forced to try to talk the Mexican government into agreeing to a Trump policy only put into place in 2019, despite having promised that the policy was changing.

But the implications expand well beyond this immediate decision as well.

It suggests, as the progressive Court skeptics feared, that the Supreme Court's feints towards "moderation" this year were little more than political maneuvering meant to take the wind out of the sails of the pack-the-court crowd. Having accomplished that, the radicals on the Court now feel free to unleash their hardline right-wing views and they aren't going to be constrained by expectations of a good-faith reading of either law or precedent in that mission.

Even in the early summer, there were skeptics of the "moderate" Court narrative. Respected legal analysts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern at Slate pointed out in June that the Court "chose the very last day of the term to let us know that when the rubber hits the road, partisan politics is what matters," by further gutting the Voting Rights Act and ruling that even more dark money can flow into politics. Law professor Leah Litman at NBC News noted that "several high-profile decisions" were distracting journalists from the real story, which is "several lower-profile decisions featured more traditional partisan divisions and those decisions are likely to be extremely consequential."This radical "remain in Mexico" decision proves the skeptics right.

The most immediate future concern is over abortion rights. In October, the Court will hear arguments about a Mississippi law banning pre-viability abortions, which directly violates Roe v. Wade. The decision will likely be rendered in June 2022. Mississippi has directly asked the Court to overturn Roe. Despite some idiotic hot takes hoping the Roberts court will do the right thing, the odds have always been high that this Court would find some way to uphold the ban, even if they use some shell game legal reasoning that muddies the water enough to avoid the "Roe overturned" headlines that could really hurt Republicans in the 2022 midterms. Now it's even more certain that this Supreme Court feels no compunction about tearing up precedent in order to criminalize abortion.

It appears the Supreme Court is ready to dance with those that brung 'em, giving Trump and the religious right the radical policies they've always wanted. It will only mean tearing up the very idea of legal good faith and defying the will of the voters.

Having secured the misleading "moderate court" narrative, the conservative justices appear to feel free to now go hog wild. The very sloppiness of the "remain in Mexico" decision indicates a court that is done pretending at judicial restraint. They were appointed for one mission and one mission only, to impose a far-right ideology on an unwilling America. After a few head nods in the direction of moderation, it appears the far-right justices are feeling ready to let 'er rip.

See the rest here:

Trump allies distance themselves from rally for Capitol rioters that's drawing Proud Boys back to DC - Raw Story