Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

My heart is always lighter and my smile brighter when something like this happens.

Pardoned by El Presidente four months ago, he was arrested after being confronted by the home owner while breaking into someone's house. He fled, but was caught by police a short distance away, and is now being held pending charges, bail hearing, court appearances, all that good stuff.

He was one of the most violent J6 rioters and had an extensive criminal record prior to that event, including "...past arrests for residential burglary, grand larceny, assault, disorderly conduct, and vandalism". He was sentenced to eight years prison to be followed by 36 months supervised release. He was convicted of eight felonies and three misdemeanors.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/capitol-rioter-zachary-alam-arrested-burglary_n_682c7b6ae4b0dc52ee2c8505

This is lovely, we'll see if it actually happens.

They could still face state charges! And it's NOT double-jeopardy!

Here's the thing. While they were prosecuted and convicted by the Feds for violating Federal criminal code on Federal property, in many cases they also violated State law in their home states while preparing to violate Federal law - and they can still be prosecuted for it! While there may be questions regarding the statute of limitations, that can sometimes be paused if the subject of the investigation is out of state for an extended period of time, like, say, in prison. And assault against a law enforcement officer has no statute of limitations.

Obviously in red states like Florida and Texas, they're not going to prosecute and will probably smash any county DA who tries to do such. But in purple and blue states? We might see some justice! And there's nothing that the weird old felon can do about it as he doesn't hold a pardon power over state convictions! So not only might they go back to prison, but they might get harsher sentencing.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/01/trump-pardoned-jan-6-mob-back-to-prison-krasner.html

A political watch group, C.R.E.W., sued in Colorado to bar Trump from the ballot under Article 14, Section 3 of the Constitution which bars people from holding elected office if they gave aid or succor to seditionists after swearing an oath to uphold the Constitution. Which Trump did. He swore the oath of office when he became President, and the aid and succor is pretty self-evident.

And the Colorado State Supreme Court ruled in favor of CREW, 4-3. The ruling is temporarily stayed until it can be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which Trump's posse immediately pledged to do.

And if the Supreme Court upholds the Colorado ruling, it's game over. He'll still face the 4+ law suits, but that's the end of his political career.

Fingers crossed!

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/donald-trump-colorado-disqualified-2024-ballot-supreme-court-1234932715/

The putsch putz is Texas-born, and Texas passed a law saying that social media companies cannot delete posts for expressing political beliefs. Here's what he posted that was deleted:

"Over the next 24 hours, I would say lets get our personal affairs in order. Prepare our weapons, and then go get’em,” Smocks wrote on Parler from a Washington, DC hotel on January 7th. “Lets hunt these cowards down like the Traitors that each of them are. This includes RINOS, Dems, and Tech Execs. We now have the green light."

He posted this on January 7th from WASHINGTON, DC, after posting other inflammatory posts prior to 1/6. Parler deleted these posts. Now, I may be missing something here, but I see a couple of problems with the suit.

First, the law passed in August of '21, seven months after the post was removed. There's a little problem with Ex Post Facto. As soon as the owners of Parler bring this up in court, that should pretty much be the end of it.

Second, PARLER AS AN ENTITY IS BROKE. CURRENTLY IT DOES NOT REALLY EXIST. They were bought out by a larger media company who were not operating the system then and can probably declare immunity from the suit. Now, if he'd filed BEFORE Parler was bought out, that would be a different as bankruptcy doesn't necessarily discharge legal action against an entity.

The article describes the guy's rather amusing criminal history going back many years. One thing that I wish it clarified was whether he was a Texas resident when the posts were deleted - it specifies he's a TX native, but not whether or not he was living there at the time. It's known the posts were made out of state. If he wasn't living in Texas, he might not have standing to file.

I can't wait for the suite to be tossed - I hope! - and the tears being shed while he moans about the Deep State controlling the court system!

Oh, also: this guy was the second person convicted in the insurrection and sentenced to 14 months in prison. No idea if he's done his time yet or what.

https://gizmodo.com/parler-january-6-convict-troy-smocks-sues-over-ban-1850479781

(EDIT: originally posted the amount of the suit was $470 mil, simple typo)