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In this episode, we talk about the deep state, J6, and Ray Epps.
Participants: Yassine, Shakesneer.
Links:
Jack Posobiec's Pipe Bomb Allegation (Twitter)
Pipe Bombs in Washington DC (FBI)
'I started a riot for the sitting president': Why Ali Alexander won't go to jail for his role in Jan. 6 (Raw Story)
J6 Select Committee Interview of Ray Epps
Ray Epps Defense Sentencing Memo (Courtlistener)
Proud Boys Sentencing Memos (Courtlistener)
Wishing For Entrapment (Yassine Meskhout)
Recorded 2024-01-19 | Uploaded 2024-01-22
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Notes -
Remind me not to get into a factual argument with a lawyer.
Overall I found the argument that Epps is a federal informant extremely unconvincing. It seems like what was presented in the podcast wasn’t so much evidence that Epps was an informant as it was presenting a narrative that is congruent with Epps being an informant.
If you want to say that Epps got a uniquely easy deal compared to others on the FBI seeking information list, then like… show me. Are those records not public? Couldn’t somebody go through and theoretically demonstrate that he got a light treatment compared to others on the list?
If you want to tell me that Epps being removed from the list is suspicious timing, then I would want to see a timelines of names being removed, of when the FBI talked to Epps, of what the media was saying about him. Based on what I heard it seems just as likely that the FBI didn’t bother updating their list until he became a public figure.
A few random thoughts-
While I don’t see any evidence of govt. efforts making J6 worse, I do concede the idea that just a few individuals can whip up a crowd. I think crowd dynamics are somewhat conformity based- At a given protest every member of the crowd has a particular proclivity to jump a police barrier, for example. As soon as one or two people with little restraint do that, it makes it much more acceptable, leading to more people doing it, compounding the effect. Thats why police fight so hard at these barriers initially. They don’t need to stop the entire crowd from jumping the barrier, just the first few people.
Obviously you still need people willing to do it, I’m not saying this is an excuse. But as it becomes more normal, it makes the actual action less notable. There were plenty of people who ‘trespassed’ on J6 by crossing the police barrier, but aren’t worth prosecuting since at that point the barrier had been basically erased. (I have an aspiring journalist cousin who even climbed the scaffolding to take better pictures. As far as I know he’s never been contacted about that.)
I don’t particularly buy the idea that Epps ‘thought the capital was open’. That does sound like covering his ass after the fact. I think a reasonable guess is that he was simply talking a big talk, and when confronted with actually fighting police, he wises up/chickens out/realizes people will get hurt.
... kinda? I tried doing that as a conversation with ymeskhout separately, but it's hard to overstate how much of a mess the available data is, and how much information either isn't publicly available or may never have been gathered to start with, and how much what is available depends on interpretation and value assessments that likely aren't shared. Some of the best documents are ones brought by plea bargainers during their sentencing request, which also means that they're out-of-date at time of publication, and possibly introduce errors.
((Though given the number of typos and miscites I've found on the DC DA's site, maybe not more error.))
There are only about 40 of the 720+ sentences published by the DoJ which contain probation-only sentences of the same or lesser length; only a dozen are shorter terms of probation than what Epps got. Sometimes that reflects a judge with a softer hand, like in Cudd's case where McFadden seemed generally skeptical of sentencing comparisons brought by the DoJ; others, such as the Kulas brothers, probably fall to what are euphemistically described as "serious physical and mental health issues" (and presumably one of the brothers caring for the other). Some of them are weird: Blauser seems like a combination of his extreme age, clear attempts to physically restrain a particularly nutty protestor that seems like she dragged him to the Capitol, long military service, and ... reading between the lines, probably a lot of health stuff. Bratjan's seems a mix of the above, though imo the court seems to take his claims of a past traumatic neurological injury as more justification for a short sentence than I would consider ideal.
Lower 5% of sentences is still a pretty big gap, though, so you have to start digging into the details, and then you end up with a giant hairball of forking paths. How serious were Epps' calls to go into the Capitol? How long was he at the Capitol grounds, even if he didn't enter the building (a matter often cited for longer probation sentences for people who did not spend long in the Capitol building itself)? How much Were his manhandling of a big metal-framed sign trying to slow other protestors down, or a threat to officers nearby? How credibly do you take Epps' claims of confusion about the Capital access -- you point out it's ass-covering, but perhaps that at least indicates knowing there's an arse to be covered? Should Epps be getting unusual credit even compared to other remorseful defendants given his Congressional testimony, even if that puts him into a class of one? What if one or two of the other cases are just badly-decided, like Bratjan's?
What about the signals that we might just not have for other cases? I can show where bringing heavy-duty first aid kit was treated as suspicious in other cases, but I can't show cases where someone brought it and no one cared to mention them. I can show cases where other people who never entered the capitol building nor committed violence themselves and received longer probation or (generally weeks of) incarceration; I have no clue how many people did not enter the building and were never charged, and even a lot of the defendants awaiting trial don't have great info quality.
But even with a lot of OCR and some carefully-written scripts, this isn't the sort of thing you can readily do off-the-cuff, or present verbally during a discussion. It's a massive gish gallop of (literally) almost a thousand Bleemer and Gorpman; worse, one that even people taking this position don't find interesting.
And it wouldn't even have been fair to ymeskhout's perspective had someone done it during the podcast; compare the two's reaction to the comparably well-known Vaughn/Mackey case -- there's a lot to be said about it, but without serious prep and focus it turns into a mess (this amici is one of the more in-depth pieces I've found, and it probably post-dates the initial recording here, and it's an hour-long discussion of its own.
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