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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023

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There are fingerprints all over the trials against the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers where the judges in those cases acted to protect multiple fed informants and agents who were on the ground that day. It got to the point that "judge" Kelly in the Proud Boys trial forced defense counsel to pre-clear questions with the prosecution in order to protect all the federal involvement in their group and on the ground that day. The highlights of that trial really are a marvel ( included an FBI agent admitting she deleted evidence with Kelly immediately sending the jury out) and should make a serious dent in any person's belief that these trials are little more than show trials, let alone remotely fair or objective.

The FBI, DOJ, Capitol Hill Police leadership have all admitted to there being significant government connected people, i.e., "feds" on the ground and in these groups.

But when they do it, it isn't a massive secret after the fact.

the full scale of the Michigan operation was a secret and was only revealed because one of the FBI agents involved beat the crap out of his wife and was pulled over by police which lead to a whole lot of work by very clever defense attorneys which kept peeling back layers and finding more feds

this isn't an easy thing to do; there were no "whistleblowers" despite you claiming there should be involved people saying "wtf" and saving conversations, there were actually people who were telling their informants and other agents to delete evidence (thankfully, they were incompetent)

in DC, the "judges" got around this issue by simply blocking evidence requests or making excuses for the fed prosecutors failing to turn over evidence to defense attorneys despite repeatedly requests as well as excusing conveniently missing evidence, text messages, chats, etc.

and not only did no careers get ended but the head of the field office was promoted to DC, worked there during the Jan6 debacle, and recently left to work at one of the big 4 accounting firms as scrutiny escalated

your portrayal of the Michigan case is simply wrong and evidences a real lack of knowledge in how these things are discovered and unwound; it should serve as an example against your biases, but you somehow think it reinforces them

But none of that means the FBI exercised any control over the crowd at the time. And that's what actually matters with respect to the conspiracy theories around Epps.

this is the new goalpost? okay, okay, maybe Epps was in fact a fed (the entire topic of this string of discussion), but unless I have direct evidence Ray Epps "controlled the crowd" (whatever that means), then it doesn't actually matter?

no thanks, I think I'll stop here before I get whiplash from the next galloping goalpost

edit: /u/huadpe blocked me for this exchange