June 12, 2025 • 54 mins
Last week, five Proud Boys announced a $100 million lawsuit against the government over their treatment during the January 6th prosecutions.
Sources:
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/70474277/tarrio-v-united-states-of-america/
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/ex-soldiers-acceptance-trump-pardon-didnt-constitute-confession-guilt-court-2021-09-23/
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/proud-boys-leaders-sue-u-s-over-jan-6-prosecutions-90f9f4ce
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/05/enrique-tarrio-prison-sentencing-proud-boys-00114104
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y93jgdvqjo
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/04/us/politics/trump-tarrio-proud-boys-pardon.html
https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hatewatch/new-fight-club-ready-street-violence/
https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/fraternal-order-alt-knights-foak/
https://www.flmd.uscourts.gov/local-rules/rule-204-discipline-
https://www-media.floridabar.org/uploads/2025/05/2025_11-MAY-Chapter-3-RRTFB-5-29-2025.pdf
https://www.justice.gov/pardon/frequently-asked-questions
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Col Zone Media. On January twentieth, twenty twenty five, Donald
Trump was sworn in as president again. In one of
his first acts, that very same day, he signed a
proclamation that commuted the sentences of fourteen people who played
(00:22):
key roles in orchestrating the January sixth, twenty twenty one
riot at the United States Capitol. Everyone else, over fifteen
hundred people who'd been charged with crimes and connection with
the events that took place that day was pardoned. Most
of them minority served their time, but the pardons restored
their rights to do things like vote, serve on juries,
(00:44):
and buy guns. Hundreds of defendants whose cases were still
working their way through the legal system were suddenly relieved
of that burden. Their cases just went away. And for
about two hundred of those fifteen hundred people, that pardon
came while they were still in federal custody serving sentences
(01:05):
for the crimes they'd been found guilty of committing. Among
those two hundred people freed with the stroke of the
president's pen that day was Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio,
and I think it was a big win for America,
so America's back. Four months later, he was back in Washington,
(01:27):
d C. With a big announcement you want to take
(01:48):
away free nothing better to do?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Episode.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Oh I'm sorry, that's not the announcement. That's DC Neighborhood
Commissioner Patricia Aguino putting on a one woman protest against
the Proud Boys during that press conference. This is Enrique Tarrio,
Ethan Norden, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Real, and Dominic Bazolda versus
(02:17):
the United States government. That's right. A get out of
jail free card wasn't enough. They're suing for one hundred
million dollars. I'm Molly Conker, and this is weird little guys.
(02:53):
This isn't a typical episode. I don't know what that
actually even means any more, None of them really are.
But this isn't the story of one weird little guy.
It's more of a weird little situation and one that's ongoing.
This lawsuit is very freshly filed, so there will be
more to this story. But it's a story with a
(03:15):
lot of weird little characters, weird little guys whose stories
you may already be familiar with, and guys whose stories
are intertwined with some we've already talked about, and others
yet to come. That project I keep saying I'm working
on is still on the back burner. I'll get to
it eventually. You can probably hear in my voice that
(03:36):
I'm a little under the weather. I was sick as
a dog all week. I think I might have finally
gotten COVID. I mean, God only knows, because those little
testics don't really work anymore. In what difference does it
really make? But I finally understand what you all have
been talking about when you say you lost your sense
(03:56):
of taste and smell. I mean I heard the word,
and I understood intellectually what you meant by them. But
it just doesn't sink in until you've got your tongue
pressed onto a lemon and you feel absolutely fucking nothing.
It's weird. So if that is what it was, I
(04:18):
guess that makes me maybe the last person in the
world to finally get it. I was starting to think
maybe I really was God's favorite, you know, somehow immune
to the worldwide plague. It's probably some kind of miracle
that I managed to escape it for a full five years.
I mean I was careful, right, I wear my mask
in court, but I got tear gased at the Insurrection
(04:40):
in twenty twenty one, I was shouldered to shoulder with
America's most unvaccinated, masked and coughing in the haze. I
spent some time in jail in twenty twenty. I was
a committed nail bier until last year. I had my
grubby little hands in my mouth sixteen times an hour
during a global pandemic. I never got it. I did
(05:02):
get really sick in the fall of twenty twenty, but
according to the CBS drive through nasal swam, that was
something else, just some disgusting virus I got as a
souvenir from an anti vax rally where a man dressed
as George Washington fell to his knees screaming about how
he was America's greatest prayer warrior. But that's neither here
(05:25):
nor there, point being. The virus comes for us all.
I'm fine now, but I spent the better part of
the week blowing my nose and complaining and not getting
any work done. So here we are again. The lawsuit
we're talking about today was filed on June sixth, twenty
(05:45):
twenty five. The plaintiffs are five proud boys Enrique Tario,
Joe Biggs, Ethan Norden, Zachary Real, and Dominic Pazzola. All
five were convicted by a jury of seditious conspiracy for
their actions leading up to and during the breach of
the Capitol Building on January sixth, twenty twenty one. Tario
(06:09):
was not physically present in DC on the day of
the riot, but he was central to planning the attack
that ultimately transpired, and as the leader. Tario received the
longest sentence of any January sixth defendant twenty two years.
Ethan Nordean was sentenced to eighteen years, Joe Biggs got
seventeen years, Zachary Reel got fifteen, and Dominic Pasola was
(06:31):
sentenced to ten years in prison. All five were released
after Trump's proclamation about the pardons, but of those five,
only in Riquet Tario was actually pardoned. Real, Nordeen, Pasola,
and Biggs did not receive pardons. They were on that
shortlist of high profile rioters who only had their sentences commuted,
(06:57):
and in this lawsuit they claimed their rights were vile. Obviously,
but we'll get to that. The suit names as its
defendants the United States of America, FBI, special Agent, Nicole
Miller in her individual capacity, and John Doe's one through ten.
These John Doe defendants are as yet unidentified employees of
(07:20):
the FBI and DOJ. It's not really unusual at this
stage of a suit like this to have these John
or Jane Doe defendants. You can identify individual actors through
the discovery process. The thing about the listed parties that
did catch my eye, though, is that they filed the
suit against those three named defendants. But in the section
(07:44):
of the complaint where you specify who the parties at
issue are, there are inexplicably a number of additional parties listed.
Every lawsuit is different. The facts are going to be
specific to the case, but the structure of a civil
complaint is more or less always pretty much the same.
(08:07):
There's a pretty bog standard structure and a lot of
boilerplate language. There's no getting around it. You can't get
fancy with it. There's a required format at the top.
You have your little introduction, and then you list and
describe the parties. You spell out the justification for jurisdiction
and venue, and then comes the statement of facts, where
(08:28):
you tell a little story about what happened and that's
followed by your cause of action, why are you suing specifically?
What legal theories are we operating off of? Here at
the bottom you say what kind of damages you're trying
to recover and whether or not you're asking for a
jury trial, and then it's signed, dated, and filed. There's
(08:52):
more to it than that. Get a lawyer if you're
trying to write a lawsuit. This isn't a crash course
on the federal rules of civil procedure or anything like that,
but you get the idea. Everybody's operating off the same template,
no matter how you're filling in the blankes here, we're
using the same format. So in the section where you
list the parties, we can all expect to see the parties,
(09:16):
the people named in the lawsuit, the people or entities
who are party to the case, the plaintiffs and the defendants,
the people who are doing the suing, and the people
being sued. And in this complaint, we do have those.
We've got our five proud boy plaintiffs and the name
defendants FBI Special Agent Nicole Miller and John Doe's one
(09:39):
through ten. But for some reason, this section also lists
a bunch of other people and organizations who are not
parties to the lawsuit, like the FBI, the DOJ, former
DC Metropolitan Police Lieutenant Shane LeMond, and a confidential informant
that the suit calls Jen Low, despite readily of public
(10:00):
information that Jen Loo is a pseudonym used by a
woman whose real name is Jenny Lynn Salinis. And this
section of the complaint also lists the Proud Boys as
an organization, and it's described like this, The Proud Boys
are an organization of patriotic political activists dedicated to preserving
(10:22):
and promoting Western civilization in general and American society in particular.
The Proud Boy's organization and its members have been subject
to systemic harassment and mischaracterization by far left wing organizations
such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti
Defamation League, and politically biased state and federal prosecutors. I
(10:47):
know it sounds like I'm nitpicking, and I am, but
this section of the complaint is called parties. It's for
listing the parties to the lawsuit, not editorializing about barious
characters in the story that you're telling. It's sloppy and weird,
but I think I know why, and I think it's
(11:10):
the same reason that the complaint was filed in the
federal court in the Middle District of Florida. See. At
first I thought this was some kind of mistake. It
wouldn't be the first time this particular attorney was connected
to a lawsuit that was accidentally filed in the wrong
district because Enrique Tario famously lives in Miami, which is
(11:30):
not in the Middle District of Florida. But in justifying
the chosen venue, the complaint notes that one of the
plaintiffs does reside in the Middle District of Florida, though
it misspells the word one and it doesn't specify which one.
For what it's worth, it's Joe Biggs. The Proud Boys
(11:53):
owe the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in DC over
three million dollars, and according to their most recent filings
related to collecting that money, Joe Biggs lives in Belusha County.
So that's fair. They can file in the Middle District
of Florida, and venue shopping is normal. They could have
(12:14):
chosen to file this in a handful of different federal
court districts. The plaintiffs live all over the place. It's
pretty normal. To choose the court you think will work
out best for you for whatever reason. But I think
they chose the Middle District of Florida because that's the
only federal court district where their attorney is a member
of the bar. I'll admit it. I was surprised when
(12:39):
I saw who they'd gotten to represent them, and maybe
I shouldn't have been. He's like a bad penny. He
just keeps turning up because they're at the very bottom
of this very weird, twenty eight page complaint. There's the
signature Augustus Invictus Esquire. He's come up a handful of
(13:05):
times on this show, but it's never really the right
time to tell you about him. A couple of weeks ago,
in the episode about the lawsuit filed by Unite the
Right protesters against the city of Charlottesville because the police
weren't nice to them during their Nazi rally, he's the
one who ghost wrote that lawsuit. Months ago. In that
(13:25):
episode about those astro turfed marches against Sharia law, he
was the organizer and headline speaker of the march in Orlando,
And of course, in the episode in fall of last
year about the Nazi torch March at Eva, he made
an appearance as one of the marchers. It's going to
(13:45):
be a long, strange story when the day finally comes
for him to get his own episodes. But that day
is not today. He is, among other things, a practicing attorney.
On his website, he bills himself as the Attorney for
the Damned. That site, which is ostensibly an advertisement for
(14:10):
his legal services, is dominated by this gigantic screen shot
of a Charlotte Observer article about his own acquittal in
twenty twenty two on a domestic violence charge, and on
the site he proudly displays his own mug shot next
to a professional headshot, juxtaposing these two images to show
(14:30):
potential clients that sure, he's a professional attorney, but he's
been where they are. He gets it, and he won,
and you can too. Attorney for the Damned is a
mantle that's been claimed by others before him, and applied
to others still. It's the title of two separate books
(14:53):
about a different Ohio born attorney, Clarence Darrow, who you
may remember from The Scope's Monkey Trial. Another book with
the same title was written by an attorney who provides
state appointed services to those nemed criminally insane, and it
was the title of an article about death row appeals
in a nineteen eighty seven issue of the American Bar
Association Journal. It's a phrase that gets tossed around, but
(15:18):
in my mind, Augustus Invictus is the attorney for the
damned in the same way Edgar Steele was like Invictus.
It was Steele who gave himself the nickname, and in
Steele's case, it was after he unsuccessfully defended the Aryan
Nations in a lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
(15:39):
The plaintiffs in that case were members of a family
who'd been shot at by the security guards at a
Nazi compound in Idaho. Steele eventually died in prison in
twenty fourteen. He was three years into a fifty year
sentence for trying to hire someone to murder his wife
with a pipe bomb. So what I mean is Augustus
(16:00):
Invictus is a movement lawyer. He's not just there a lawyer,
He's a fellow traveler. Back in twenty seventeen, when he
was the headline speaker of the United the Right rally
in Charlottesville, he was also a proud Boy Augustus Invictus,
was second in command of a short lived group called
the Fraternal Order of Alt Knights. It was a group
(16:24):
within a group. It was a subset of Proud Boys
who were especially committed to violence, and it was fully
sanctioned by Proud Boys leadership. Shortly after the group was
formed by Kyle Chapman in the spring of twenty seventeen,
Proud Boy's magazine ran an article with the headline the
kids are Alt Knights, and the subhead was based Stickman
(16:48):
organizes official military arm of the Proud Boys. Based Stickman
was the nickname that Kyle Chapman earned after beating a
counter protester with a stick at a Trump rally in
March of twenty seventeen. He wasn't even a Proud Boy
at the time, but after the video of the assault
(17:08):
went viral, he was recruited and joined. Broadboy's founder Gavin
McGinnis took advantage of Chapman's viral Internet fame and had
him on as a guest on his show several times
in the weeks that followed. McGinnis even claims that he
considered making Chapman in the president of the entire organization,
(17:28):
but settled on endorsing Chapman's leadership of this new militant wing.
In May of twenty seventeen, Chapman invited Augustus and Victus
to speak at a free speech rally in Boston. Invictus,
who had already lost one run for Senate and was
about to announce another one, advocated for armed revolution over
political activism, and he urged the crowd to take up
(17:51):
arms because the Civil War had already started.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
When comte port, when political port, he's only ineffective, and
speech and competitions in order rests me nothing.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
You have nothing left with four suborbs. If I let
myself get going down this path, we'll be stuck on
this tangent for months. But the point is they didn't
hire Augustus and Victus because he was the finest lawyer
money could buy. I'm fairly familiar with his work, and
(18:28):
I would argue that he is very much not. They
hired him because they have a history and they share
a belief system, and he was very available. He's been
struggling to make ends meet for the last few years.
I think, in part because people are hesitant to hire
an attorney who might not make it to their court date.
(18:49):
He is at this very moment out on bond. He
was convicted in October of twenty twenty four on the
felony charge of burning an object with the intent to
intimidate for his perticipation in that Nazi torch march at
the University of Virginia back in twenty seventeen. In January
of this year, a judge imposed a sentence of nine
months in jail, but the execution of that sentence is
(19:12):
currently on hold pending his appeal. It's not ideal for
an attorney to be convicted of a crime. Can have
serious consequences for their license and know. The rules vary
from court to court. In the state of Florida, the
rules are actually extremely clear. Attorneys must self report any
(19:36):
felony conviction to the state bar within ten days of
the conviction order being entered. They're then automatically suspended from
the bar, and the rules very specifically say that this
suspension does remain in effect during any appeals process for
the criminal conviction. An attorney convicted of a felony can
(19:57):
challenge their suspension from the bar. It is by order
of the Florida Supreme Court automatic. Those are the rules.
They're pretty clear, but they don't seem to have been
applied here. I have no explanation for this. At a
bond hearing earlier this year, Invictus's criminal defense attorney offered
(20:21):
a vague assertion that his client had self reported the
conviction to the Florida State Bar as required, but says
they told him that they wouldn't make any determination about
suspending his license or disbarring him until after the appeal
had concluded. That's what his attorney said. That's all I
(20:42):
can tell you. That's not consistent with the rules as
they're written, and there's no documentation I can find about
this either way. But if you take them at their
word that the Florida Bar said it's okay for him
to keep practicing law in a Florida state court, I
can accept that Florida's a weird place. But every jurisdiction
(21:06):
where an attorney practices law has its own rules, and
I did look up the local rules in the Middle
District of Florida. That's the only federal court aside from
the US Supreme Court where Invictus is a member of
the bar, and in the Middle District of Florida local
rule two point zero four B states that any attorney
(21:28):
admitted to practice in the district must report any felony
conviction within fourteen days. Suspension from the bar is automatic.
Attorneys in this position can file a petition to stay
the automatic suspension, and that petition has to be heard
by a judge. I think if it came before a judge,
(21:48):
I would be able to find evidence that this happened,
and I can't. Absence of proof isn't proof of absence.
I get that it's possible that it happened, but I
can't find anything, and I don't know why he would
be allowed to continue to practice law under these conditions.
(22:09):
It's not clear to me if the proud boy's lawyer
is even going to be allowed to appear in court
on this case. It's even more unclear what anyone's plan
is if their lawyer is unexpectedly required to report to jail.
His current situation is fluid. The judge who granted him
his appeal bond could decide at any time that he's
(22:30):
changed his mind and he's going to impose the sentence
next week. When Enrique Tarrio spoke to a reporter from
the Wall Street Journal about this lawsuit, He said that
they'd had no trouble at all finding an attorney to
take the case, saying, quote, we were able to shop,
and he claims he spoke to more than a dozen
(22:50):
law firms, adding I believe attorneys are going to do
backflips trying to get JA sixers on board with a
lot of lawsuits. And if this suit proved successful, that
may be true down the line, but I'm not sure
it's been true in his experience, because if he had
the pick of the litter, I don't think he would
(23:13):
have picked Augustus and Victus. And the press conference he
held to announce filing this suit last week wasn't actually
the first one. Back in February of this year, four
months before the suit was actually filed, Trio held a
press conference outside the Capitol Building.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Let me be clear, I'm not talking about violent retribution.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
I'm talking about something much more powerful, accountability and the
rule of law.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
That is why today we are announcing a lawsuit against
the DOJ. And at that press conference back in February,
Trio said they'd already raised tons of money for their
legal defense, all in cryptocurrency. Believe it or not, And
(24:06):
he also said they already had a lawyer lined up,
everything was ready to go and they were about to file.
My question, yet, who exactly is suing for the plaintiffs?
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Do you have a lawyer?
Speaker 2 (24:18):
We do have a lawyer. We'll be announcing that in
the coming weeks, but right now it's the five of
us that are going to be suing the DJ.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Just a few minutes after that press conference ended, Enrique
Tarrio was arrested for simple assault after striking the outstretched
arm of a woman holding up her cell phone to
take a video of him, But prosecutors ultimately declined to
pursue the case and the lawsuits still didn't materialize. And
then last month, on May third, twenty five, Enrique Tarrio
(24:54):
took his mom out to dinner. If you knew anything
about Enrique Tarrio, you know he's fiercely loyal to his mother,
Zuni du Artes. Kind of a mama's boy, and normally
I would leave a guy's mom out of this, but
Tario's mother has been deeply involved in her son's political
activities for years. It's her name on the incorporation paperwork
(25:18):
for the business that has processed online payments for Proud
Boys merchandise for years, and since the events of January sixth,
she's been a vocal supporter of her son and his
co defendants. So last month, they're out to dinner, and
they're out to dinner at a rather particular restaurant. They
(25:38):
were invited to dine at mar A Lago by some
unnamed member of the club, and during dinner that evening,
this unnamed friend of theirs introduced them to the President
of the United States as he was crossing the patio
where they were eating. That night, Tarrio tweeted, and I
(26:00):
just had a great conversation with Potus. He called me
and my mother over while we were at dinner and
said he was sorry for what Joe Biden did to
all j sixers. He knew the hardships me and my
family face for three long years. He knew how many
times they moved me, and he said he's working on
making things right. I thanked him for giving me my
(26:21):
life back. He replied with I love you guys. To
all the Jay sixers. He wanted me to send y'all
a message, He said, thank you working to make things right.
(26:53):
What could that possibly mean? Trio's already been pardoned. Trump
pardoned him. He's free, his conviction is wiped away. He's
technically still a convicted felon for a twenty thirteen conviction
for his role in a scheme to resell a million
dollars worth of stolen diabetic test strips. But that's not
(27:13):
what Trump meant. I mean, technically, Trump could pardon him
for that too. It was a federal crime. But that's
not it. That's not what he means. This Saturday night
meeting on the patio at Mar A Lago was just
a day after the announcement that the administration was prepared
to settle the wrongful death lawsuit filed by the estate
(27:34):
of Ashley Babbitt. Ashley Babbitt was the January sixth rioter
who was shot and killed by a Capitol police officer
as she was attempting to climb through a broken window
during the assault on the Capitol building. In a sane world,
one with normal rules, I don't think that lawsuit had legs.
(27:55):
I mean, maybe maybe they could have gotten it in
front of a jury, but I don't think that jury
would have awarded her family any money settling it was
a choice it was a message. It was, perhaps in
the minds of those who think the rioters did nothing wrong,
(28:15):
an attempt to make it right. The government is going
to pay out nearly five million dollars to Babbitt's family.
Her death is tragic. You may not think so, but
I'll never be happy to see someone get shot and
killed by a police officer. But let's be so honest.
(28:37):
It wasn't a wrongful death. I hate to see a
cop fire his gun. I never want to see that,
but if it's gonna happen, I think this is one
of those moments where you kind of have to admit
it made sense in the moment. I mean, there were
hordes of wild eyed conspiracy theorists and they directed a
gallows outside and now they're smashing through the windows get in.
(29:02):
The lawsuit was never a winner, but they settled, and
then suddenly here's a cavalcade of insurrectionist at the court's
doorstep with their hands held out. For one hundred million
dollars and for what. According to the complaint, their rights
were violated, specifically their fourth, fifth and sixth Amendment rights.
(29:28):
They're also bringing a claim of malicious prosecution. We'll take
these one at a time. Briefly, the first count is
the Fourth Amendment violations. That's the one that protects you
from unreasonable searches and seizures, the one that means a
cop has to get a warrant to search your stuff.
Good amendment. I'm a big fan. This one's a little
(29:51):
all over the place. There is a rather serious allegation
here that the government violated attorney client privilege by illegally
listening in on phone calls and reading text messages between
the criminal defendants and their attorneys during the course of
the investigation and trial. If that happened, that's very serious.
(30:13):
I'm not going to weigh on on whether it did
happen in this case, but it's something that can and
does happen, and it would absolutely be a gross violation
of their rights if the government was listening in when
they were having privileged conversations with their lawyers about their
criminal case. If there's evidence that that happened, that should
(30:35):
get aired out in court and heard by a jury.
The other claims made here are something else. The opening
allegation under this count reads, quote, first, the defendants had
no probable cause to investigate or prosecute the plaintiffs. The
(30:56):
defendants were aware that no evidence supported the allegations and
had to use underhanded and unconstitutional methods in order to
convict the plaintiffs. Oh, no probabill cause at all, Like
there was not any reason to suspect that maybe any
(31:16):
one of them had potentially committed some kind of crime, Like,
for example, what if there was video footage of one
of them ripping a riot shield out of a police
officer's hands and then using that riot shield to break
a window, then becoming the first rioter to physically breach
the United States Capitol Building. I don't know what if
there was something like that. No probabill cause. Some of
(31:41):
the other alleged Fourth Amendment violations here are quote deliberately
misrepresenting the context, attribution, and content of the text communications
in order to create the implication of plaintiffs guilt. I'm
not sure that has anything to do with the Fourth Amendment.
I mean, you could argue that the text messages themselves
(32:01):
were improperly obtained. That's a Fourth Amendment issue, But the
way a prosecutor characterizes the evidence when it's being presented,
it doesn't really implicate the Fourth Amendment. I mean, I
don't know. I'm not a lawyer. The second count is
a Fifth Amendment violation. They claim they were denied their
(32:22):
right to due process under the law because the law
as it was applied here was so vague that a
reasonable person would have no way of knowing they were
breaking it. Quote, because you can be convicted for conspiracy
with people over whom you have no authority and to
whom you gave no orders. Rather, mere statements of approval, agreement,
and enthusiasm are apparently enough to form a criminal conspiracy,
(32:45):
provided the points of view are offensive enough to the
employees of the Federal Breau of Investigation and the Department
of Justice, no matter how attenuated from criminal action they
may have been. If I ever do get a whole
series of episodes out of Augustus and Victus, there will
probably be an hour long rant about his steadfast refusal
(33:07):
to accept the legal definition of conspiracy. I feel like
I've been through this in his work several times, so
I'm just gonna let it go for now. I didn't
bother to dig into the specifics of the prosecution's theory
of this case, but one of the real stumbling blocks
and having this conversation with anyone is that most people
(33:28):
don't really understand what it means to be part of
a criminal conspiracy. You don't have to go to a
special meeting where every single person involved gets together and
discusses a specific plan and then everyone agrees to specifically
carry out that plan. It's way more nebulous than that,
(33:50):
in a way that is actually kind of scary, but
it's most basic. It just means that two or more
people agree to do something unlawful. They don't have to
even succeed at doing it. They just have to make
some concrete action in that direction. And not everyone involved
(34:11):
needs to know everyone else, and not everyone involved needs
to know the whole plan. So if this core group
of conspirators planned to, I don't know, do something like
break into the Capitol building to stop the certification of
the election, and then they took some kind of concrete
(34:33):
steps towards making that happen, like flying to DC and
then assembling in a group and then marching towards the
Capitol and then breaking into it, that's a conspiracy. But
when Dominic Pazzola and Ethan Norden crawled through that broken
window and breached the Capitol Building and then encouraged the
(34:55):
crowd behind them to come with them. That could be two.
The planning doesn't have to take place at a second
location a week beforehand. It can take place right there.
And the thing about a conspiracy is that once it's
in motion, you're on the hook for more than just
(35:16):
your own actions, and more than just the actions you
think you agreed to ahead of time. So there's a
lot of nitty gritty here about what exactly is alleged
by the government what was argued at trial. But my
guess is this claim in the lawsuit rests squarely on
a personal disagreement with what is really just the legal
(35:40):
definition of a criminal conspiracy. The third claim is that
the government violated their sixth Amendment right now to a
(36:00):
fair trial. It mostly just copies and paste those same
allegations that the government illegally monitored privileged attorney client communication,
but it also claims that the government intimidated a key
defense witness and frightened him out of testifying at trial.
The witness in question is former DC Police lieutenant Shane Lamond.
(36:22):
He's a former police lieutenant because he was sentenced last
week to eighteen months in prison for obstruction of justice
and making false statements, charges that arose out of his
close friendship with Enrique Tario. In the months leading up
to January sixth, he'd been illegally leaking information to Tario
about the police investigation into him. In the weeks before
(36:46):
January sixth, the DC police were investigating an incident that
took place at a Proud Boy march in d C
in December of twenty twenty. The group tore a Black
Lives Matter banner off of a Black church and then
burned it in the street. That church now owns the
Proud Boy's trademark, and the Proud Boys owe the church
(37:06):
three million dollars. But Tarrio's lawsuit alleges that the FBI
threatened Lamont with obstruction charges if he were to go
through with his plan to testify for the defense in
Tario's seditious conspiracy trial, and the suit alleges that this
caused Lamont to change his mind about testifying. I don't
(37:29):
actually have any doubt that the FBI had a conversation
with Shane Lamond. They were investigating him, and he was
charged and convicted of that crime. It wasn't a threat
They were conducting an investigation. Whether or not that conversation
also functioned to some degree as an intentional witness intimidation
(37:51):
tactic is I don't know. That's not the most likely explanation.
It would be very hard to prove, and it's just
not a interesting to me. The fourth and final count
of the complaint is malicious prosecution, and this threw me
for a loop. Quote the defendants prosecuted the plaintiffs despite
(38:15):
knowing that the plaintiffs neither participated in the events of
January sixth, nor organized and coordinated them. Indeed, they had
to invent a whole new legal theory, stack the jury,
reach attorney client communications, and embed a paid government informant
in order to convict them. I'm stry back up for
(38:36):
a second. What did that say that the government knew
that they didn't participate in the events of January sixth.
They didn't even participate. It's not just that they didn't
plan or organize it, and it wasn't a seditious conspiracy.
They didn't even participate. That's remarkable. It goes on the
(39:00):
defendants made, influenced, and or participated in the decision to
prosecute the plaintiffs for which prosecution there was no probable cause,
and which caused the plaintiff to suffer a deprivation of liberty.
The defendant's misconduct directly resulted in the unlawful prosecution and
continued deprivation of the plaintiff's liberty in violation of their
(39:22):
constitutional rights, no probable cause, none at all. The problem
with this theory is it can't be malicious prosecution if
you're guilty. It's straight up can't. It's not gray, there's
no but there's no exception. That's not how it works.
(39:45):
It's not malicious prosecution if you were guilty of the crime,
and they know that, they even put the definition right
in there quote. To make out a claim for malicious
pri section, a plaintiff generally must show three things. One
that the criminal proceeding was initiated or continued by the
(40:08):
defendant without probable cause, two that the defendant instituted the
proceeding maliciously, and three that the proceedings have terminated in
favor of the accused. So, if, for example, some politically
motivated prosecutor charged you with a totally fake, made up
(40:31):
crime that you didn't do, just to punish you because
he didn't like you. But the jury saw through it
and they acquitted you. You could sue for malicious prosecution.
What he did was malicious, unfounded, and the proceedings terminated
in your favor, meaning you were not convicted. But that's
(40:52):
not what happened here. They were lawfully legally convicted by
This isn't a criminal appeal, right, They're not appealing the
conviction on the basis of improprieties at trial. This is
a civil lawsuit. I think they're choosing to interpret terminated
(41:15):
in favor of the accused to mean the pardon, that
the pardon was exonerative, and that the pardon was part
of the criminal process, thus ending it in their favor.
I'd always had the general impression that accepting a pardon
(41:36):
required admitting guilt, and I think that is a common belief,
but it might not be true. A nineteen fifteen Supreme
Court case is generally understood to imply that, but not
everyone agrees, and the most recent test of that theory
was a twenty nineteen case in the Tenth Circuit Court
(41:57):
of Appeals that held that it could convicted warp criminal
wasn't admitting he did it when he accepted President Trump's pardon,
so it may be a gray area. I'm thinking about
doing a minisode on those two cases, but don't help
me to it, and I didn't have time this week.
(42:18):
But I do have a plan to get a real
lawyer on the phone to answer some of our burning
questions about this particular legal quagmire. So I'm not a lawyer,
but for what it's worth. The current version of the
Frequently Asked Questions on the Department of Justice's web page
for the Office of the Pardon Attorney says this, a
(42:42):
pardon is an expression of the President's forgiveness and can
be granted in recognition of the applicant's acceptance of responsibility
for the crime and establish good conduct for a significant
period of time after a conviction or completion of sentence.
It does not dignify innocence. So when the president pardons you,
(43:06):
it just wipes out the negative effects of the conviction. Right,
So you are no longer convicted of that crime. You
can vote again, you can get guns again, you can
serve on a jury again. You're no longer a convicted felon.
If you're still in jail, you come out of jail.
If you still owe restitution. You don't owe any more restitution,
(43:30):
but you can't claw back restitution you already paid. And
it doesn't mean the president is saying this crime never happened.
It just means you no longer have consequences for this crime.
But like I said, there are varying interpretations of whether
(43:50):
or not the act of accepting the pardon means that
you are admitting guilt. I don't think anyone interprets pardons
to be exonerations, but I don't know. I guess there's
something for everyone out there. And I was really going
down the rabbit hole here reading legal journal articles about
(44:12):
the particulars on the issue when I realized it doesn't
even matter. It doesn't matter if a pardon means you're
innocent or you're guilty. Because of the five plaintiffs in
this lawsuit, only one of them was pardoned, and Riekie
Tario received a full presidential pardon for his January sixth convictions,
(44:32):
but the other four didn't. They only had their sentences commuted.
So even if we're on board for this legal theory
that the pardon made in Rike Tario innocent and thus
enables him to sue for malicious prosecution. The other four can't.
They're still guilty, their convictions still stand. They haven't been pardoned.
(44:56):
And I guess that fatal flaw on the plan must
have occurred to their lawyer too, because shortly before filing
the lawsuit, those four plaintiffs Bigs Nordine, Pazola, and Real
all filed applications for full pardons. Those applications, which the
lawsuit claims are currently being considered, are inexplicably attached as
(45:21):
an exhibit to the complaint in full, unredacted. It has addresses,
phone numbers, email addresses, names of family members, including ex
wives and minor children. It has their god damn social
Security numbers. It's a genuinely shocking and dangerous act of
(45:45):
negligence on the part of their attorney. But aside from
accidentally exposing four of his clients to identity theft, the
documents are pretty interesting. One of the pages of the
application asks the applicant to briefly describe the offense they
were convicted of, and under that it asks do you
(46:06):
accept responsibility for your conduct? Explain why or why not?
And to that question, Ethan Norden wrote, it would be
untrue for me to accept responsibility for what I did
not do and really not possible. Dominic Pozzola conceded that
he may be guilty of trespassing, but when it comes
(46:29):
to the felonies, I feel as though the prosecution of
the felony charges were one hundred percent politically motivated. Zachary
Real wrote, I never denied that I thought the election
was stolen. I still believe that the election was stolen.
But I am happy to see President Trump is back
in office and looking forward to being a productive member
of society again. This pardon will help with that. That
(46:51):
was one sentence. It's just the one period at the
end of that for Zachary Reel, and both President and
member are spelled wrong. You know, no hate to the
man if he can't spell, but this is a pretty
important document. Maybe get somebody to help you. Joe Biggs's
essay questions were apparently written on a separate sheet of paper,
(47:13):
which is not included. I do hope they remember to
include the attachments when they sent that to the pardon attorney.
That would be so sloppy. On his application, Zachary Real
notes that he's currently living off of his savings and
he really hopes he's not going to have to sell
his truth social stock to make ends meet. This case
(47:35):
was only just filed on Friday, June sixth, so as
I'm writing and recording this, no real time has passed
for any work to have been done on the case.
The government hasn't filed anything in response, and there's been
no public comment from anyone involved, aside from Tario himself.
We'll just have to wait and see what happens. I
(47:59):
talked a little bit about my own experiences on January
sixth on an episode a few months ago, the episode
about Matthew Huddle, the January sixth defendant who was shot
and killed during a traffic stop just days after receiving
his pardon. But surprisingly, writing this episode didn't really call
to mind my own memories of that day. It did
(48:20):
remind me of another day, though it was a lifetime ago.
But do you remember September twenty ninth, twenty twenty. I
do the days run together when you work from home,
but I remember the whole day that day because I
had a very weird day. I had to get up
(48:42):
early and drive an hour to Richmond to go to court.
I'd been arrested earlier in the summer while covering the
protests against police brutality. It was a bullshit charge and
they knew it. But that doesn't really matter. We don't
have to get into it. And when I got to
court that morning, they told me that they were going
to drop my charge and they handed me something to sign.
(49:04):
You know, to standard procedure, sign this will dismiss your case.
Never sign anything you haven't read, because I read the
form and it said that by signing it, I was
admitting that I was guilty of a crime, and they're
still dismissing the charge. I wasn't going to be convicted
of it, but I was putting on paper that I
did it, which I didn't, So I balked. They backed down,
(49:29):
and I didn't sign it. My charge got dropped. Everything
ended happily. It took another few months to regain full
use and sensation of my left hand because they'd left
me handcuffed in a folding chair in the jail parking
garage for so long back in July. But that's not
the point of the story, no, because my clearest memory
of September twenty ninth, twenty twenty, was later that evening
(49:54):
I was sitting on a friend's couch watching TV, and
I nearly choked to death on my seltzer and I
heard this.
Speaker 3 (50:03):
Are you willing tonight to condemn white subpremises and militia
groups and to say that they need to stand down
and not add to the violence in a number of
these cities, as we saw in Kenosha and as we've
seen in Portland.
Speaker 1 (50:19):
Do it?
Speaker 3 (50:20):
Ay?
Speaker 2 (50:20):
I would say, almost everything I see is from the
left wing, not from the right wing.
Speaker 3 (50:25):
What do you do.
Speaker 2 (50:27):
I'm willing to do anything.
Speaker 3 (50:28):
I want to see peace and do it, sir?
Speaker 1 (50:30):
Do it? Say it? Do you want to call them?
Speaker 2 (50:33):
What do you want to call them? Give me a name,
give me a stand back and stand by. But I'll
tell you what. I'll tell you what. Somebody's got to
do something about antifa and the left.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
Stand back and stand by. Somebody's got to do something
about the left. Won't someone rid me of these troublesome
anti fascists?
Speaker 3 (51:01):
Right?
Speaker 1 (51:03):
I would love to know what the president of the
United States and the leader of the fascist street gang
that tried to steal an election for him, talked about
for ten minutes on the patio of the President's private
club last month, I really would. I don't think we
ever will. But just a few weeks after that conversation,
(51:27):
there's Enrique Tarrio boldly asking for one hundred million dollars
from the United States government. I don't think he'll get
a hundred million, but I do believe he's going to
get a payout. I'm not the only one who sees
that on the horizon. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse tweeted a news
(51:48):
story about the lawsuit, adding, expect a fixed sue and
settle outcome with MAGA do OJ taxpayer resources to political
allies is their specialty. Now, this is pure speculation. This
is my own personal opinion. It's not an assertion of fact.
(52:08):
You're not facing this on anything concrete, and it has
let me be clear my opinion. I don't think this
is a real lawsuit. I mean, it's filed in a
real court. It mostly conforms to the federal rules of
civil procedure. It looks like a lawsuit. It quacks like
(52:28):
a duck, you know, but it kind of feels like
everyone involved knows that this doesn't need to hold up.
It doesn't have to have a strong legal foundation. It
doesn't matter that the guy they hired, has never won
a case and might be in jail by the time
anyone's trying to argue emotion. It doesn't need to convince
(52:50):
a jury. It's not really a lawsuit. It's an invitation.
It's an outstretched hand waiting to be warmly clasped to
close a handshake deal. It opens the door for Trump
to make good on his promise to make things right.
(53:12):
They can just settle and write everybody a big fat check.
The Proud Boys are standing back and standing by, and
they might be about to get very, very rich. Weird
(53:45):
Little Guys is a production of Kolsae Media and iHeartRadio.
It's research, written, and recorded by me Molly Conger. Our
executive producers are Sophie Lettterman and Robert Evans. The show
is edited by the wildly town that Lardy Gaiken. The
theme music was composed by Brad Dickard. You can email
me at Weird Little Guys podcast at gmail dot com.
I will definitely read it, but I probably won't answer it.
It's nothing personal. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the
(54:09):
show with other listeners on the Weird Little Guys subreddit.
Just don't post anything that's going to make you one
of my work little guys.
Col Zone Media. On January twentieth, twenty twenty five, Donald
Trump was sworn in as president again. In one of
his first acts, that very same day, he signed a
proclamation that commuted the sentences of fourteen people who played
(00:22):
key roles in orchestrating the January sixth, twenty twenty one
riot at the United States Capitol. Everyone else, over fifteen
hundred people who'd been charged with crimes and connection with
the events that took place that day was pardoned. Most
of them minority served their time, but the pardons restored
their rights to do things like vote, serve on juries,
(00:44):
and buy guns. Hundreds of defendants whose cases were still
working their way through the legal system were suddenly relieved
of that burden. Their cases just went away. And for
about two hundred of those fifteen hundred people, that pardon
came while they were still in federal custody serving sentences
(01:05):
for the crimes they'd been found guilty of committing. Among
those two hundred people freed with the stroke of the
president's pen that day was Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio,
and I think it was a big win for America,
so America's back. Four months later, he was back in Washington,
(01:27):
d C. With a big announcement you want to take
(01:48):
away free nothing better to do?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Episode.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Oh I'm sorry, that's not the announcement. That's DC Neighborhood
Commissioner Patricia Aguino putting on a one woman protest against
the Proud Boys during that press conference. This is Enrique Tarrio,
Ethan Norden, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Real, and Dominic Bazolda versus
(02:17):
the United States government. That's right. A get out of
jail free card wasn't enough. They're suing for one hundred
million dollars. I'm Molly Conker, and this is weird little guys.
(02:53):
This isn't a typical episode. I don't know what that
actually even means any more, None of them really are.
But this isn't the story of one weird little guy.
It's more of a weird little situation and one that's ongoing.
This lawsuit is very freshly filed, so there will be
more to this story. But it's a story with a
(03:15):
lot of weird little characters, weird little guys whose stories
you may already be familiar with, and guys whose stories
are intertwined with some we've already talked about, and others
yet to come. That project I keep saying I'm working
on is still on the back burner. I'll get to
it eventually. You can probably hear in my voice that
(03:36):
I'm a little under the weather. I was sick as
a dog all week. I think I might have finally
gotten COVID. I mean, God only knows, because those little
testics don't really work anymore. In what difference does it
really make? But I finally understand what you all have
been talking about when you say you lost your sense
(03:56):
of taste and smell. I mean I heard the word,
and I understood intellectually what you meant by them. But
it just doesn't sink in until you've got your tongue
pressed onto a lemon and you feel absolutely fucking nothing.
It's weird. So if that is what it was, I
(04:18):
guess that makes me maybe the last person in the
world to finally get it. I was starting to think
maybe I really was God's favorite, you know, somehow immune
to the worldwide plague. It's probably some kind of miracle
that I managed to escape it for a full five years.
I mean I was careful, right, I wear my mask
in court, but I got tear gased at the Insurrection
(04:40):
in twenty twenty one, I was shouldered to shoulder with
America's most unvaccinated, masked and coughing in the haze. I
spent some time in jail in twenty twenty. I was
a committed nail bier until last year. I had my
grubby little hands in my mouth sixteen times an hour
during a global pandemic. I never got it. I did
(05:02):
get really sick in the fall of twenty twenty, but
according to the CBS drive through nasal swam, that was
something else, just some disgusting virus I got as a
souvenir from an anti vax rally where a man dressed
as George Washington fell to his knees screaming about how
he was America's greatest prayer warrior. But that's neither here
(05:25):
nor there, point being. The virus comes for us all.
I'm fine now, but I spent the better part of
the week blowing my nose and complaining and not getting
any work done. So here we are again. The lawsuit
we're talking about today was filed on June sixth, twenty
(05:45):
twenty five. The plaintiffs are five proud boys Enrique Tario,
Joe Biggs, Ethan Norden, Zachary Real, and Dominic Pazzola. All
five were convicted by a jury of seditious conspiracy for
their actions leading up to and during the breach of
the Capitol Building on January sixth, twenty twenty one. Tario
(06:09):
was not physically present in DC on the day of
the riot, but he was central to planning the attack
that ultimately transpired, and as the leader. Tario received the
longest sentence of any January sixth defendant twenty two years.
Ethan Nordean was sentenced to eighteen years, Joe Biggs got
seventeen years, Zachary Reel got fifteen, and Dominic Pasola was
(06:31):
sentenced to ten years in prison. All five were released
after Trump's proclamation about the pardons, but of those five,
only in Riquet Tario was actually pardoned. Real, Nordeen, Pasola,
and Biggs did not receive pardons. They were on that
shortlist of high profile rioters who only had their sentences commuted,
(06:57):
and in this lawsuit they claimed their rights were vile. Obviously,
but we'll get to that. The suit names as its
defendants the United States of America, FBI, special Agent, Nicole
Miller in her individual capacity, and John Doe's one through ten.
These John Doe defendants are as yet unidentified employees of
(07:20):
the FBI and DOJ. It's not really unusual at this
stage of a suit like this to have these John
or Jane Doe defendants. You can identify individual actors through
the discovery process. The thing about the listed parties that
did catch my eye, though, is that they filed the
suit against those three named defendants. But in the section
(07:44):
of the complaint where you specify who the parties at
issue are, there are inexplicably a number of additional parties listed.
Every lawsuit is different. The facts are going to be
specific to the case, but the structure of a civil
complaint is more or less always pretty much the same.
(08:07):
There's a pretty bog standard structure and a lot of
boilerplate language. There's no getting around it. You can't get
fancy with it. There's a required format at the top.
You have your little introduction, and then you list and
describe the parties. You spell out the justification for jurisdiction
and venue, and then comes the statement of facts, where
(08:28):
you tell a little story about what happened and that's
followed by your cause of action, why are you suing specifically?
What legal theories are we operating off of? Here at
the bottom you say what kind of damages you're trying
to recover and whether or not you're asking for a
jury trial, and then it's signed, dated, and filed. There's
(08:52):
more to it than that. Get a lawyer if you're
trying to write a lawsuit. This isn't a crash course
on the federal rules of civil procedure or anything like that,
but you get the idea. Everybody's operating off the same template,
no matter how you're filling in the blankes here, we're
using the same format. So in the section where you
list the parties, we can all expect to see the parties,
(09:16):
the people named in the lawsuit, the people or entities
who are party to the case, the plaintiffs and the defendants,
the people who are doing the suing, and the people
being sued. And in this complaint, we do have those.
We've got our five proud boy plaintiffs and the name
defendants FBI Special Agent Nicole Miller and John Doe's one
(09:39):
through ten. But for some reason, this section also lists
a bunch of other people and organizations who are not
parties to the lawsuit, like the FBI, the DOJ, former
DC Metropolitan Police Lieutenant Shane LeMond, and a confidential informant
that the suit calls Jen Low, despite readily of public
(10:00):
information that Jen Loo is a pseudonym used by a
woman whose real name is Jenny Lynn Salinis. And this
section of the complaint also lists the Proud Boys as
an organization, and it's described like this, The Proud Boys
are an organization of patriotic political activists dedicated to preserving
(10:22):
and promoting Western civilization in general and American society in particular.
The Proud Boy's organization and its members have been subject
to systemic harassment and mischaracterization by far left wing organizations
such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti
Defamation League, and politically biased state and federal prosecutors. I
(10:47):
know it sounds like I'm nitpicking, and I am, but
this section of the complaint is called parties. It's for
listing the parties to the lawsuit, not editorializing about barious
characters in the story that you're telling. It's sloppy and weird,
but I think I know why, and I think it's
(11:10):
the same reason that the complaint was filed in the
federal court in the Middle District of Florida. See. At
first I thought this was some kind of mistake. It
wouldn't be the first time this particular attorney was connected
to a lawsuit that was accidentally filed in the wrong
district because Enrique Tario famously lives in Miami, which is
(11:30):
not in the Middle District of Florida. But in justifying
the chosen venue, the complaint notes that one of the
plaintiffs does reside in the Middle District of Florida, though
it misspells the word one and it doesn't specify which one.
For what it's worth, it's Joe Biggs. The Proud Boys
(11:53):
owe the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in DC over
three million dollars, and according to their most recent filings
related to collecting that money, Joe Biggs lives in Belusha County.
So that's fair. They can file in the Middle District
of Florida, and venue shopping is normal. They could have
(12:14):
chosen to file this in a handful of different federal
court districts. The plaintiffs live all over the place. It's
pretty normal. To choose the court you think will work
out best for you for whatever reason. But I think
they chose the Middle District of Florida because that's the
only federal court district where their attorney is a member
of the bar. I'll admit it. I was surprised when
(12:39):
I saw who they'd gotten to represent them, and maybe
I shouldn't have been. He's like a bad penny. He
just keeps turning up because they're at the very bottom
of this very weird, twenty eight page complaint. There's the
signature Augustus Invictus Esquire. He's come up a handful of
(13:05):
times on this show, but it's never really the right
time to tell you about him. A couple of weeks ago,
in the episode about the lawsuit filed by Unite the
Right protesters against the city of Charlottesville because the police
weren't nice to them during their Nazi rally, he's the
one who ghost wrote that lawsuit. Months ago. In that
(13:25):
episode about those astro turfed marches against Sharia law, he
was the organizer and headline speaker of the march in Orlando,
And of course, in the episode in fall of last
year about the Nazi torch March at Eva, he made
an appearance as one of the marchers. It's going to
(13:45):
be a long, strange story when the day finally comes
for him to get his own episodes. But that day
is not today. He is, among other things, a practicing attorney.
On his website, he bills himself as the Attorney for
the Damned. That site, which is ostensibly an advertisement for
(14:10):
his legal services, is dominated by this gigantic screen shot
of a Charlotte Observer article about his own acquittal in
twenty twenty two on a domestic violence charge, and on
the site he proudly displays his own mug shot next
to a professional headshot, juxtaposing these two images to show
(14:30):
potential clients that sure, he's a professional attorney, but he's
been where they are. He gets it, and he won,
and you can too. Attorney for the Damned is a
mantle that's been claimed by others before him, and applied
to others still. It's the title of two separate books
(14:53):
about a different Ohio born attorney, Clarence Darrow, who you
may remember from The Scope's Monkey Trial. Another book with
the same title was written by an attorney who provides
state appointed services to those nemed criminally insane, and it
was the title of an article about death row appeals
in a nineteen eighty seven issue of the American Bar
Association Journal. It's a phrase that gets tossed around, but
(15:18):
in my mind, Augustus Invictus is the attorney for the
damned in the same way Edgar Steele was like Invictus.
It was Steele who gave himself the nickname, and in
Steele's case, it was after he unsuccessfully defended the Aryan
Nations in a lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
(15:39):
The plaintiffs in that case were members of a family
who'd been shot at by the security guards at a
Nazi compound in Idaho. Steele eventually died in prison in
twenty fourteen. He was three years into a fifty year
sentence for trying to hire someone to murder his wife
with a pipe bomb. So what I mean is Augustus
(16:00):
Invictus is a movement lawyer. He's not just there a lawyer,
He's a fellow traveler. Back in twenty seventeen, when he
was the headline speaker of the United the Right rally
in Charlottesville, he was also a proud Boy Augustus Invictus,
was second in command of a short lived group called
the Fraternal Order of Alt Knights. It was a group
(16:24):
within a group. It was a subset of Proud Boys
who were especially committed to violence, and it was fully
sanctioned by Proud Boys leadership. Shortly after the group was
formed by Kyle Chapman in the spring of twenty seventeen,
Proud Boy's magazine ran an article with the headline the
kids are Alt Knights, and the subhead was based Stickman
(16:48):
organizes official military arm of the Proud Boys. Based Stickman
was the nickname that Kyle Chapman earned after beating a
counter protester with a stick at a Trump rally in
March of twenty seventeen. He wasn't even a Proud Boy
at the time, but after the video of the assault
(17:08):
went viral, he was recruited and joined. Broadboy's founder Gavin
McGinnis took advantage of Chapman's viral Internet fame and had
him on as a guest on his show several times
in the weeks that followed. McGinnis even claims that he
considered making Chapman in the president of the entire organization,
(17:28):
but settled on endorsing Chapman's leadership of this new militant wing.
In May of twenty seventeen, Chapman invited Augustus and Victus
to speak at a free speech rally in Boston. Invictus,
who had already lost one run for Senate and was
about to announce another one, advocated for armed revolution over
political activism, and he urged the crowd to take up
(17:51):
arms because the Civil War had already started.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
When comte port, when political port, he's only ineffective, and
speech and competitions in order rests me nothing.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
You have nothing left with four suborbs. If I let
myself get going down this path, we'll be stuck on
this tangent for months. But the point is they didn't
hire Augustus and Victus because he was the finest lawyer
money could buy. I'm fairly familiar with his work, and
(18:28):
I would argue that he is very much not. They
hired him because they have a history and they share
a belief system, and he was very available. He's been
struggling to make ends meet for the last few years.
I think, in part because people are hesitant to hire
an attorney who might not make it to their court date.
(18:49):
He is at this very moment out on bond. He
was convicted in October of twenty twenty four on the
felony charge of burning an object with the intent to
intimidate for his perticipation in that Nazi torch march at
the University of Virginia back in twenty seventeen. In January
of this year, a judge imposed a sentence of nine
months in jail, but the execution of that sentence is
(19:12):
currently on hold pending his appeal. It's not ideal for
an attorney to be convicted of a crime. Can have
serious consequences for their license and know. The rules vary
from court to court. In the state of Florida, the
rules are actually extremely clear. Attorneys must self report any
(19:36):
felony conviction to the state bar within ten days of
the conviction order being entered. They're then automatically suspended from
the bar, and the rules very specifically say that this
suspension does remain in effect during any appeals process for
the criminal conviction. An attorney convicted of a felony can
(19:57):
challenge their suspension from the bar. It is by order
of the Florida Supreme Court automatic. Those are the rules.
They're pretty clear, but they don't seem to have been
applied here. I have no explanation for this. At a
bond hearing earlier this year, Invictus's criminal defense attorney offered
(20:21):
a vague assertion that his client had self reported the
conviction to the Florida State Bar as required, but says
they told him that they wouldn't make any determination about
suspending his license or disbarring him until after the appeal
had concluded. That's what his attorney said. That's all I
(20:42):
can tell you. That's not consistent with the rules as
they're written, and there's no documentation I can find about
this either way. But if you take them at their
word that the Florida Bar said it's okay for him
to keep practicing law in a Florida state court, I
can accept that Florida's a weird place. But every jurisdiction
(21:06):
where an attorney practices law has its own rules, and
I did look up the local rules in the Middle
District of Florida. That's the only federal court aside from
the US Supreme Court where Invictus is a member of
the bar, and in the Middle District of Florida local
rule two point zero four B states that any attorney
(21:28):
admitted to practice in the district must report any felony
conviction within fourteen days. Suspension from the bar is automatic.
Attorneys in this position can file a petition to stay
the automatic suspension, and that petition has to be heard
by a judge. I think if it came before a judge,
(21:48):
I would be able to find evidence that this happened,
and I can't. Absence of proof isn't proof of absence.
I get that it's possible that it happened, but I
can't find anything, and I don't know why he would
be allowed to continue to practice law under these conditions.
(22:09):
It's not clear to me if the proud boy's lawyer
is even going to be allowed to appear in court
on this case. It's even more unclear what anyone's plan
is if their lawyer is unexpectedly required to report to jail.
His current situation is fluid. The judge who granted him
his appeal bond could decide at any time that he's
(22:30):
changed his mind and he's going to impose the sentence
next week. When Enrique Tarrio spoke to a reporter from
the Wall Street Journal about this lawsuit, He said that
they'd had no trouble at all finding an attorney to
take the case, saying, quote, we were able to shop,
and he claims he spoke to more than a dozen
(22:50):
law firms, adding I believe attorneys are going to do
backflips trying to get JA sixers on board with a
lot of lawsuits. And if this suit proved successful, that
may be true down the line, but I'm not sure
it's been true in his experience, because if he had
the pick of the litter, I don't think he would
(23:13):
have picked Augustus and Victus. And the press conference he
held to announce filing this suit last week wasn't actually
the first one. Back in February of this year, four
months before the suit was actually filed, Trio held a
press conference outside the Capitol Building.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Let me be clear, I'm not talking about violent retribution.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
I'm talking about something much more powerful, accountability and the
rule of law.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
That is why today we are announcing a lawsuit against
the DOJ. And at that press conference back in February,
Trio said they'd already raised tons of money for their
legal defense, all in cryptocurrency. Believe it or not, And
(24:06):
he also said they already had a lawyer lined up,
everything was ready to go and they were about to file.
My question, yet, who exactly is suing for the plaintiffs?
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Do you have a lawyer?
Speaker 2 (24:18):
We do have a lawyer. We'll be announcing that in
the coming weeks, but right now it's the five of
us that are going to be suing the DJ.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Just a few minutes after that press conference ended, Enrique
Tarrio was arrested for simple assault after striking the outstretched
arm of a woman holding up her cell phone to
take a video of him, But prosecutors ultimately declined to
pursue the case and the lawsuits still didn't materialize. And
then last month, on May third, twenty five, Enrique Tarrio
(24:54):
took his mom out to dinner. If you knew anything
about Enrique Tarrio, you know he's fiercely loyal to his mother,
Zuni du Artes. Kind of a mama's boy, and normally
I would leave a guy's mom out of this, but
Tario's mother has been deeply involved in her son's political
activities for years. It's her name on the incorporation paperwork
(25:18):
for the business that has processed online payments for Proud
Boys merchandise for years, and since the events of January sixth,
she's been a vocal supporter of her son and his
co defendants. So last month, they're out to dinner, and
they're out to dinner at a rather particular restaurant. They
(25:38):
were invited to dine at mar A Lago by some
unnamed member of the club, and during dinner that evening,
this unnamed friend of theirs introduced them to the President
of the United States as he was crossing the patio
where they were eating. That night, Tarrio tweeted, and I
(26:00):
just had a great conversation with Potus. He called me
and my mother over while we were at dinner and
said he was sorry for what Joe Biden did to
all j sixers. He knew the hardships me and my
family face for three long years. He knew how many
times they moved me, and he said he's working on
making things right. I thanked him for giving me my
(26:21):
life back. He replied with I love you guys. To
all the Jay sixers. He wanted me to send y'all
a message, He said, thank you working to make things right.
(26:53):
What could that possibly mean? Trio's already been pardoned. Trump
pardoned him. He's free, his conviction is wiped away. He's
technically still a convicted felon for a twenty thirteen conviction
for his role in a scheme to resell a million
dollars worth of stolen diabetic test strips. But that's not
(27:13):
what Trump meant. I mean, technically, Trump could pardon him
for that too. It was a federal crime. But that's
not it. That's not what he means. This Saturday night
meeting on the patio at Mar A Lago was just
a day after the announcement that the administration was prepared
to settle the wrongful death lawsuit filed by the estate
(27:34):
of Ashley Babbitt. Ashley Babbitt was the January sixth rioter
who was shot and killed by a Capitol police officer
as she was attempting to climb through a broken window
during the assault on the Capitol building. In a sane world,
one with normal rules, I don't think that lawsuit had legs.
(27:55):
I mean, maybe maybe they could have gotten it in
front of a jury, but I don't think that jury
would have awarded her family any money settling it was
a choice it was a message. It was, perhaps in
the minds of those who think the rioters did nothing wrong,
(28:15):
an attempt to make it right. The government is going
to pay out nearly five million dollars to Babbitt's family.
Her death is tragic. You may not think so, but
I'll never be happy to see someone get shot and
killed by a police officer. But let's be so honest.
(28:37):
It wasn't a wrongful death. I hate to see a
cop fire his gun. I never want to see that,
but if it's gonna happen, I think this is one
of those moments where you kind of have to admit
it made sense in the moment. I mean, there were
hordes of wild eyed conspiracy theorists and they directed a
gallows outside and now they're smashing through the windows get in.
(29:02):
The lawsuit was never a winner, but they settled, and
then suddenly here's a cavalcade of insurrectionist at the court's
doorstep with their hands held out. For one hundred million
dollars and for what. According to the complaint, their rights
were violated, specifically their fourth, fifth and sixth Amendment rights.
(29:28):
They're also bringing a claim of malicious prosecution. We'll take
these one at a time. Briefly, the first count is
the Fourth Amendment violations. That's the one that protects you
from unreasonable searches and seizures, the one that means a
cop has to get a warrant to search your stuff.
Good amendment. I'm a big fan. This one's a little
(29:51):
all over the place. There is a rather serious allegation
here that the government violated attorney client privilege by illegally
listening in on phone calls and reading text messages between
the criminal defendants and their attorneys during the course of
the investigation and trial. If that happened, that's very serious.
(30:13):
I'm not going to weigh on on whether it did
happen in this case, but it's something that can and
does happen, and it would absolutely be a gross violation
of their rights if the government was listening in when
they were having privileged conversations with their lawyers about their
criminal case. If there's evidence that that happened, that should
(30:35):
get aired out in court and heard by a jury.
The other claims made here are something else. The opening
allegation under this count reads, quote, first, the defendants had
no probable cause to investigate or prosecute the plaintiffs. The
(30:56):
defendants were aware that no evidence supported the allegations and
had to use underhanded and unconstitutional methods in order to
convict the plaintiffs. Oh, no probabill cause at all, Like
there was not any reason to suspect that maybe any
(31:16):
one of them had potentially committed some kind of crime, Like,
for example, what if there was video footage of one
of them ripping a riot shield out of a police
officer's hands and then using that riot shield to break
a window, then becoming the first rioter to physically breach
the United States Capitol Building. I don't know what if
there was something like that. No probabill cause. Some of
(31:41):
the other alleged Fourth Amendment violations here are quote deliberately
misrepresenting the context, attribution, and content of the text communications
in order to create the implication of plaintiffs guilt. I'm
not sure that has anything to do with the Fourth Amendment.
I mean, you could argue that the text messages themselves
(32:01):
were improperly obtained. That's a Fourth Amendment issue, But the
way a prosecutor characterizes the evidence when it's being presented,
it doesn't really implicate the Fourth Amendment. I mean, I
don't know. I'm not a lawyer. The second count is
a Fifth Amendment violation. They claim they were denied their
(32:22):
right to due process under the law because the law
as it was applied here was so vague that a
reasonable person would have no way of knowing they were
breaking it. Quote, because you can be convicted for conspiracy
with people over whom you have no authority and to
whom you gave no orders. Rather, mere statements of approval, agreement,
and enthusiasm are apparently enough to form a criminal conspiracy,
(32:45):
provided the points of view are offensive enough to the
employees of the Federal Breau of Investigation and the Department
of Justice, no matter how attenuated from criminal action they
may have been. If I ever do get a whole
series of episodes out of Augustus and Victus, there will
probably be an hour long rant about his steadfast refusal
(33:07):
to accept the legal definition of conspiracy. I feel like
I've been through this in his work several times, so
I'm just gonna let it go for now. I didn't
bother to dig into the specifics of the prosecution's theory
of this case, but one of the real stumbling blocks
and having this conversation with anyone is that most people
(33:28):
don't really understand what it means to be part of
a criminal conspiracy. You don't have to go to a
special meeting where every single person involved gets together and
discusses a specific plan and then everyone agrees to specifically
carry out that plan. It's way more nebulous than that,
(33:50):
in a way that is actually kind of scary, but
it's most basic. It just means that two or more
people agree to do something unlawful. They don't have to
even succeed at doing it. They just have to make
some concrete action in that direction. And not everyone involved
(34:11):
needs to know everyone else, and not everyone involved needs
to know the whole plan. So if this core group
of conspirators planned to, I don't know, do something like
break into the Capitol building to stop the certification of
the election, and then they took some kind of concrete
(34:33):
steps towards making that happen, like flying to DC and
then assembling in a group and then marching towards the
Capitol and then breaking into it, that's a conspiracy. But
when Dominic Pazzola and Ethan Norden crawled through that broken
window and breached the Capitol Building and then encouraged the
(34:55):
crowd behind them to come with them. That could be two.
The planning doesn't have to take place at a second
location a week beforehand. It can take place right there.
And the thing about a conspiracy is that once it's
in motion, you're on the hook for more than just
(35:16):
your own actions, and more than just the actions you
think you agreed to ahead of time. So there's a
lot of nitty gritty here about what exactly is alleged
by the government what was argued at trial. But my
guess is this claim in the lawsuit rests squarely on
a personal disagreement with what is really just the legal
(35:40):
definition of a criminal conspiracy. The third claim is that
the government violated their sixth Amendment right now to a
(36:00):
fair trial. It mostly just copies and paste those same
allegations that the government illegally monitored privileged attorney client communication,
but it also claims that the government intimidated a key
defense witness and frightened him out of testifying at trial.
The witness in question is former DC Police lieutenant Shane Lamond.
(36:22):
He's a former police lieutenant because he was sentenced last
week to eighteen months in prison for obstruction of justice
and making false statements, charges that arose out of his
close friendship with Enrique Tario. In the months leading up
to January sixth, he'd been illegally leaking information to Tario
about the police investigation into him. In the weeks before
(36:46):
January sixth, the DC police were investigating an incident that
took place at a Proud Boy march in d C
in December of twenty twenty. The group tore a Black
Lives Matter banner off of a Black church and then
burned it in the street. That church now owns the
Proud Boy's trademark, and the Proud Boys owe the church
(37:06):
three million dollars. But Tarrio's lawsuit alleges that the FBI
threatened Lamont with obstruction charges if he were to go
through with his plan to testify for the defense in
Tario's seditious conspiracy trial, and the suit alleges that this
caused Lamont to change his mind about testifying. I don't
(37:29):
actually have any doubt that the FBI had a conversation
with Shane Lamond. They were investigating him, and he was
charged and convicted of that crime. It wasn't a threat
They were conducting an investigation. Whether or not that conversation
also functioned to some degree as an intentional witness intimidation
(37:51):
tactic is I don't know. That's not the most likely explanation.
It would be very hard to prove, and it's just
not a interesting to me. The fourth and final count
of the complaint is malicious prosecution, and this threw me
for a loop. Quote the defendants prosecuted the plaintiffs despite
(38:15):
knowing that the plaintiffs neither participated in the events of
January sixth, nor organized and coordinated them. Indeed, they had
to invent a whole new legal theory, stack the jury,
reach attorney client communications, and embed a paid government informant
in order to convict them. I'm stry back up for
(38:36):
a second. What did that say that the government knew
that they didn't participate in the events of January sixth.
They didn't even participate. It's not just that they didn't
plan or organize it, and it wasn't a seditious conspiracy.
They didn't even participate. That's remarkable. It goes on the
(39:00):
defendants made, influenced, and or participated in the decision to
prosecute the plaintiffs for which prosecution there was no probable cause,
and which caused the plaintiff to suffer a deprivation of liberty.
The defendant's misconduct directly resulted in the unlawful prosecution and
continued deprivation of the plaintiff's liberty in violation of their
(39:22):
constitutional rights, no probable cause, none at all. The problem
with this theory is it can't be malicious prosecution if
you're guilty. It's straight up can't. It's not gray, there's
no but there's no exception. That's not how it works.
(39:45):
It's not malicious prosecution if you were guilty of the crime,
and they know that, they even put the definition right
in there quote. To make out a claim for malicious
pri section, a plaintiff generally must show three things. One
that the criminal proceeding was initiated or continued by the
(40:08):
defendant without probable cause, two that the defendant instituted the
proceeding maliciously, and three that the proceedings have terminated in
favor of the accused. So, if, for example, some politically
motivated prosecutor charged you with a totally fake, made up
(40:31):
crime that you didn't do, just to punish you because
he didn't like you. But the jury saw through it
and they acquitted you. You could sue for malicious prosecution.
What he did was malicious, unfounded, and the proceedings terminated
in your favor, meaning you were not convicted. But that's
(40:52):
not what happened here. They were lawfully legally convicted by
This isn't a criminal appeal, right, They're not appealing the
conviction on the basis of improprieties at trial. This is
a civil lawsuit. I think they're choosing to interpret terminated
(41:15):
in favor of the accused to mean the pardon, that
the pardon was exonerative, and that the pardon was part
of the criminal process, thus ending it in their favor.
I'd always had the general impression that accepting a pardon
(41:36):
required admitting guilt, and I think that is a common belief,
but it might not be true. A nineteen fifteen Supreme
Court case is generally understood to imply that, but not
everyone agrees, and the most recent test of that theory
was a twenty nineteen case in the Tenth Circuit Court
(41:57):
of Appeals that held that it could convicted warp criminal
wasn't admitting he did it when he accepted President Trump's pardon,
so it may be a gray area. I'm thinking about
doing a minisode on those two cases, but don't help
me to it, and I didn't have time this week.
(42:18):
But I do have a plan to get a real
lawyer on the phone to answer some of our burning
questions about this particular legal quagmire. So I'm not a lawyer,
but for what it's worth. The current version of the
Frequently Asked Questions on the Department of Justice's web page
for the Office of the Pardon Attorney says this, a
(42:42):
pardon is an expression of the President's forgiveness and can
be granted in recognition of the applicant's acceptance of responsibility
for the crime and establish good conduct for a significant
period of time after a conviction or completion of sentence.
It does not dignify innocence. So when the president pardons you,
(43:06):
it just wipes out the negative effects of the conviction. Right,
So you are no longer convicted of that crime. You
can vote again, you can get guns again, you can
serve on a jury again. You're no longer a convicted felon.
If you're still in jail, you come out of jail.
If you still owe restitution. You don't owe any more restitution,
(43:30):
but you can't claw back restitution you already paid. And
it doesn't mean the president is saying this crime never happened.
It just means you no longer have consequences for this crime.
But like I said, there are varying interpretations of whether
(43:50):
or not the act of accepting the pardon means that
you are admitting guilt. I don't think anyone interprets pardons
to be exonerations, but I don't know. I guess there's
something for everyone out there. And I was really going
down the rabbit hole here reading legal journal articles about
(44:12):
the particulars on the issue when I realized it doesn't
even matter. It doesn't matter if a pardon means you're
innocent or you're guilty. Because of the five plaintiffs in
this lawsuit, only one of them was pardoned, and Riekie
Tario received a full presidential pardon for his January sixth convictions,
(44:32):
but the other four didn't. They only had their sentences commuted.
So even if we're on board for this legal theory
that the pardon made in Rike Tario innocent and thus
enables him to sue for malicious prosecution. The other four can't.
They're still guilty, their convictions still stand. They haven't been pardoned.
(44:56):
And I guess that fatal flaw on the plan must
have occurred to their lawyer too, because shortly before filing
the lawsuit, those four plaintiffs Bigs Nordine, Pazola, and Real
all filed applications for full pardons. Those applications, which the
lawsuit claims are currently being considered, are inexplicably attached as
(45:21):
an exhibit to the complaint in full, unredacted. It has addresses,
phone numbers, email addresses, names of family members, including ex
wives and minor children. It has their god damn social
Security numbers. It's a genuinely shocking and dangerous act of
(45:45):
negligence on the part of their attorney. But aside from
accidentally exposing four of his clients to identity theft, the
documents are pretty interesting. One of the pages of the
application asks the applicant to briefly describe the offense they
were convicted of, and under that it asks do you
(46:06):
accept responsibility for your conduct? Explain why or why not?
And to that question, Ethan Norden wrote, it would be
untrue for me to accept responsibility for what I did
not do and really not possible. Dominic Pozzola conceded that
he may be guilty of trespassing, but when it comes
(46:29):
to the felonies, I feel as though the prosecution of
the felony charges were one hundred percent politically motivated. Zachary
Real wrote, I never denied that I thought the election
was stolen. I still believe that the election was stolen.
But I am happy to see President Trump is back
in office and looking forward to being a productive member
of society again. This pardon will help with that. That
(46:51):
was one sentence. It's just the one period at the
end of that for Zachary Reel, and both President and
member are spelled wrong. You know, no hate to the
man if he can't spell, but this is a pretty
important document. Maybe get somebody to help you. Joe Biggs's
essay questions were apparently written on a separate sheet of paper,
(47:13):
which is not included. I do hope they remember to
include the attachments when they sent that to the pardon attorney.
That would be so sloppy. On his application, Zachary Real
notes that he's currently living off of his savings and
he really hopes he's not going to have to sell
his truth social stock to make ends meet. This case
(47:35):
was only just filed on Friday, June sixth, so as
I'm writing and recording this, no real time has passed
for any work to have been done on the case.
The government hasn't filed anything in response, and there's been
no public comment from anyone involved, aside from Tario himself.
We'll just have to wait and see what happens. I
(47:59):
talked a little bit about my own experiences on January
sixth on an episode a few months ago, the episode
about Matthew Huddle, the January sixth defendant who was shot
and killed during a traffic stop just days after receiving
his pardon. But surprisingly, writing this episode didn't really call
to mind my own memories of that day. It did
(48:20):
remind me of another day, though it was a lifetime ago.
But do you remember September twenty ninth, twenty twenty. I
do the days run together when you work from home,
but I remember the whole day that day because I
had a very weird day. I had to get up
(48:42):
early and drive an hour to Richmond to go to court.
I'd been arrested earlier in the summer while covering the
protests against police brutality. It was a bullshit charge and
they knew it. But that doesn't really matter. We don't
have to get into it. And when I got to
court that morning, they told me that they were going
to drop my charge and they handed me something to sign.
(49:04):
You know, to standard procedure, sign this will dismiss your case.
Never sign anything you haven't read, because I read the
form and it said that by signing it, I was
admitting that I was guilty of a crime, and they're
still dismissing the charge. I wasn't going to be convicted
of it, but I was putting on paper that I
did it, which I didn't, So I balked. They backed down,
(49:29):
and I didn't sign it. My charge got dropped. Everything
ended happily. It took another few months to regain full
use and sensation of my left hand because they'd left
me handcuffed in a folding chair in the jail parking
garage for so long back in July. But that's not
the point of the story, no, because my clearest memory
of September twenty ninth, twenty twenty, was later that evening
(49:54):
I was sitting on a friend's couch watching TV, and
I nearly choked to death on my seltzer and I
heard this.
Speaker 3 (50:03):
Are you willing tonight to condemn white subpremises and militia
groups and to say that they need to stand down
and not add to the violence in a number of
these cities, as we saw in Kenosha and as we've
seen in Portland.
Speaker 1 (50:19):
Do it?
Speaker 3 (50:20):
Ay?
Speaker 2 (50:20):
I would say, almost everything I see is from the
left wing, not from the right wing.
Speaker 3 (50:25):
What do you do.
Speaker 2 (50:27):
I'm willing to do anything.
Speaker 3 (50:28):
I want to see peace and do it, sir?
Speaker 1 (50:30):
Do it? Say it? Do you want to call them?
Speaker 2 (50:33):
What do you want to call them? Give me a name,
give me a stand back and stand by. But I'll
tell you what. I'll tell you what. Somebody's got to
do something about antifa and the left.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
Stand back and stand by. Somebody's got to do something
about the left. Won't someone rid me of these troublesome
anti fascists?
Speaker 3 (51:01):
Right?
Speaker 1 (51:03):
I would love to know what the president of the
United States and the leader of the fascist street gang
that tried to steal an election for him, talked about
for ten minutes on the patio of the President's private
club last month, I really would. I don't think we
ever will. But just a few weeks after that conversation,
(51:27):
there's Enrique Tarrio boldly asking for one hundred million dollars
from the United States government. I don't think he'll get
a hundred million, but I do believe he's going to
get a payout. I'm not the only one who sees
that on the horizon. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse tweeted a news
(51:48):
story about the lawsuit, adding, expect a fixed sue and
settle outcome with MAGA do OJ taxpayer resources to political
allies is their specialty. Now, this is pure speculation. This
is my own personal opinion. It's not an assertion of fact.
(52:08):
You're not facing this on anything concrete, and it has
let me be clear my opinion. I don't think this
is a real lawsuit. I mean, it's filed in a
real court. It mostly conforms to the federal rules of
civil procedure. It looks like a lawsuit. It quacks like
(52:28):
a duck, you know, but it kind of feels like
everyone involved knows that this doesn't need to hold up.
It doesn't have to have a strong legal foundation. It
doesn't matter that the guy they hired, has never won
a case and might be in jail by the time
anyone's trying to argue emotion. It doesn't need to convince
(52:50):
a jury. It's not really a lawsuit. It's an invitation.
It's an outstretched hand waiting to be warmly clasped to
close a handshake deal. It opens the door for Trump
to make good on his promise to make things right.
(53:12):
They can just settle and write everybody a big fat check.
The Proud Boys are standing back and standing by, and
they might be about to get very, very rich. Weird
(53:45):
Little Guys is a production of Kolsae Media and iHeartRadio.
It's research, written, and recorded by me Molly Conger. Our
executive producers are Sophie Lettterman and Robert Evans. The show
is edited by the wildly town that Lardy Gaiken. The
theme music was composed by Brad Dickard. You can email
me at Weird Little Guys podcast at gmail dot com.
I will definitely read it, but I probably won't answer it.
It's nothing personal. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the
(54:09):
show with other listeners on the Weird Little Guys subreddit.
Just don't post anything that's going to make you one
of my work little guys.
Host
Molly Conger
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