Fool Me Once

The scene above is a screen shot from a video that's been going atound the web -- you can see more of it at this post on YouTube. It was taken at a protest in New York earlier this week, ostensibly to support Donald Trump as the district attorney there cogitates indicting and arresting him. However, Republicans were nearly unanimous in urging supporters to stay home, and there seems to have been a general recognition that over half those in attendance at such a rally would be informants, provocateurs, or dupes. This appears to have been the main lesson of January 6 for Trump supporters, and it looks like it was well learned.

Anthony Brian Logan, the YouTube commentator at the link, thinks the QAnon Shaman clone on the right was certainly a provocateur, but his interlocutor on the left was quite possibly one as well. I certainly don't think Mr Logan is crazy to speculate about that. The QAnon Shaman clone is copying Jacob Chansley's January 6 outfit so closely -- just with antlers instead of horns and a MAGA flag cape instead of a US flag on a spear -- that it suggests he's capable of deliberate, goal-oriented activity, when during his exchange with the guy on the left he seems to be pretending to be psychotic.

Doesn't work, sorry. If he himself is disorganized in his thinking, he's got to have handlers who aren't. Somebody went shopping for those furs and antlers, and if he was incapable of putting on the face paint, somebody behind the scenes was.

This brings me to the latest development in the seditious conspiracy trial of five Proud Boys members:

The Department of Justice (DOJ) revealed yet another government informant, according to an attorney for one of the Proud Boys facing a seditious conspiracy case tied to January 6.

This latest twist came on Wednesday when the government conveyed to the defense that this person, who was set to appear on behalf of one of the defendants on Thursday, served as a “Confidential Human Source” (CHS) from April 2021 through at least January 2023, according to a court filing.

. . . The informant, who was not identified in the court filing, also participated in prayer meetings with members of one or more of the defendants’ families and engaged in conversations with one of the defendant’s family members about replacing one of the defense counsel, the attorney added.

. . . U.S. District Court Judge Tim Kelly had told U.S. government to respond to the filing by 9 a.m. on Thursday, but then ordered the deadline to be extended to the afternoon followed by a hearing on the motion and pushed back the trial to resume on Friday.

What's going on here isn't exactly clear, but the prosecution had rested its case in the trial, and the defense was set to put on its own witnesses -- except that one of the first witnesses they wanted to call turns out to have been a government informant, which was apparently news to them. The story says farther down at the link,

Already, the Justice Department indicated the FBI had upwards of eight informants inside the Proud Boys leading up to January 6. The New York Times, which reported these revelations in November, insisted that no “evidence has surfaced” suggesting that the FBI “played any role in the attack.”

Except that anywhere anybody turned on January 6, it looks like there was a good chance he'd be talking to either an informant, a provocateur, or a dupe. The guy on the left in the photo at the top of this post makes an insightful observation that Republicans, Trump supporters or not, don't normally wear fur headdresses and face paint, but of course, they don't dress in black outfits with face masks like the guy on the left, either. There's something staged about that whole vignette. The story at the link continues,

The filing on Wednesday from [Zachary Rehl's attorney Carmen] Hernandez said the defendants are “preparing a separate motion to dismiss the Indictment or for an evidentiary hearing, raising serious and substantiated allegations of governmental misconduct surrounding the surreptitious invasion and interference of the defense team by the government through a confidential human source, at the government’s behest.”

It's important to keep in mind that the Proud Boys' attorneys are following a variation of Defense Strategy 101, which is to attack the investigation as variously incompetent or unconstitutional, but the defendants are entitled to a vigorous defense, especially in a case that bears some resemblance to the Chicago Seven. Judge Kelly has been struggling to maintain an appearance that the trial is a serious legal proceeding, but the defense has continued to show success in interrupting it and, if nothing else, creating a record for appeals, as well as a subversive public narrative, just as the Chicago Seven defense was able to do.

Meanwhile, it's hard to dismiss the idea that the scene in the video is a scripted dialog between two actors, and some part of the whole drama we've seen over the past few years is just badly written reality TV.