{"id":48033,"date":"2021-01-09T17:23:41","date_gmt":"2021-01-09T22:23:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=48033"},"modified":"2021-01-09T17:23:41","modified_gmt":"2021-01-09T22:23:41","slug":"capitol-chaos-and-federal-crimes-a-tsunami-of-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=48033","title":{"rendered":"Capitol chaos and federal crimes: “a tsunami of stupid”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n
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The best and smartest opinion — with legal citations — on Wednesday’s Capitol chaos comes from Kevin Underhill, on his LoweringTheBar.<\/p>\n

Underhill’s main point is accurately summarized in his title. He goes on to name some of these idiots and tell us what has happened to them. (Nothing good — for them, that is.)<\/p>\n

Warning: Underhill is a brilliant satirist (and probably a brilliant lawyer). So if you’re going to be offended at how funny it is when you separate a scary seditious mob into its individual dopey pieces, start your indignation now.Brr brr brr (I’m trying to do the sound of an engine starting up but think I’ve failed).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

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Dear Idiots: Please Keep Posting Pictures of You Committing Federal Crimes<\/em><\/h2>\n

Jan 08, 2021 02:41 pm | Kevin<\/h4>\n

\"\"I guess the worst thing about a mob of armed thugs storming the U.S. Capitol isn\u2019t that it\u2019s distracting me from the piece I want to write, namely the one about the naked Australian fugitive who had to be rescued from crocodile-infested waters the other day. But it is in fact doing that.<\/em><\/p>\n

Just one of the many injuries that could\u2019ve been avoided if the current semi-President had been removed in a timely fashion.<\/em><\/p>\n

The only good thing I can think of about the tsunami of stupid that crashed into Capitol Hill on Tuesday is that so many of those idiots posed for pictures or appeared in videos that show them committing one or more crimes. In most cases, they are easily identifiable in these images, often because they posted the evidence against them to their personal social media accounts. As we have discussed many times before<\/a>, that is a very stupid thing to do. So it isn\u2019t too surprising that it happened so often the other day.<\/em><\/p>\n

Just to get this out of the way, simply being part of a mob that breaks into the Capitol building is in fact a crime, and probably several crimes. For example, it shouldn\u2019t surprise anyone that there are lots of things that are unlawful to do on U.S. Capitol grounds<\/a>, and look! One of them is to \u201cknowingly, with force and violence, enter or remain on the floor of either House of Congress.\u201d 40 U.S.C. \u00a7 5104(e)(1)(B). It\u2019s also unlawful just to be on the floor or in the gallery or meeting rooms or Congressional offices without authorization. 40 U.S.C. \u00a7 5104(e)(2). Those are misdemeanors, unless the violator was armed with a dangerous weapon (as some of these people were), in which case it\u2019s a felony.<\/em><\/p>\n

More significantly, conspiring to do this sort of thing in an effort to overthrow the government, or use force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any federal law\u2014and that was the whole point of attacking Congress on Tuesday, when the electoral votes were to be certified\u2014is \u201cseditious conspiracy\u201d punishable by up to 20 years in prison. 18 U.S.C. \u00a7 2384. Granted, \u201csedition\u201d charges are something we should be cautious about, and they shouldn\u2019t apply very often, but then armed mobs only storm the Capitol every 200 years or so.<\/a> And, for similar reasons, this fits within the definition of \u201cdomestic terrorism,\u201d defined as criminal acts dangerous to human life that \u201cappear to be intended \u2026 to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion\u201d (18 U.S.C. \u00a7 2331(5)), which again is the whole reason they were there.<\/em><\/p>\n

Oh, there\u2019s also the federal Anti-Riot Act (18 U.S.C. \u00a7 2101, up to five years), and I feel pretty confident in saying that the rioters violated that one. See 18 U.S.C. \u00a7 2102 (defining \u201criot\u201d). Under federal law, it only takes three people to constitute a riot (in California and many other states, it only takes two<\/a>), so that isn\u2019t an issue.<\/em><\/p>\n

And those are just some of the crimes they committed simply by being part of the riot. Of course individual rioters might have committed other crimes like willful injury to government property (18 U.S.C. \u00a7 1361); assault (18 U.S.C. \u00a7 113); or, let\u2019s see, murder or manslaughter (18 U.S.C. \u00a7 1111\u201312), since they killed a police officer; and\/or the state or D.C. equivalents. And there may well be self-posted images proving they did those things. But here I\u2019m just talking about the many images of people being part of the mob, which under the circumstances are in and of themselves evidence of a crime. My point is, unless you\u2019re pretty damn confident you\u2019re going to successfully overthrow the government, and these idiots had zero chance of that, you probably shouldn\u2019t make it easy to identify yourself while trying to do so. And yet, many did exactly that:<\/em><\/p>\n