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Open the floodgates!


While some were gnashing teeth over the latest ridiculousness on the filibuster from Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, or the Supreme Court striking down the Biden Administration's vaccine mandate on large employers, big, monumental news was dropping.

Now, I'm not saying those two issues are unimportant. But I still think that Manchin and Sinema will be beaten down into submission, and SCOTUS is a lost cause for now.

Attorney General Merrick Garland's Department of Justice came out with the big guns. Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, and ten other defendants were indicted for seditious conspiracy:
Stewart Rhodes, the leader and founder of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, was arrested on Thursday and charged with seditious conspiracy for organizing a wide-ranging plot to storm the Capitol last Jan. 6 and disrupt the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s electoral victory, federal law enforcement officials said.

The arrest of Mr. Rhodes was a major step forward in the sprawling investigation of the Capitol attack and the case marked the first time that prosecutors had filed charges of sedition. According to his lawyer, Jonathon Moseley, Mr. Rhodes was arrested at shortly before 1 p.m.

Mr. Rhodes, a former Army paratrooper who went on to earn a law degree at Yale, has been under investigation for his role in the riot since at least last spring when, against the advice of his lawyer, he sat down with F.B.I. agents for an interview in Texas. He was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, communicating by cellphone and a chat app with members of his team, many of whom went into the building. But there is no evidence that he entered the Capitol.

The Oath Keepers, along with the Proud Boys, have emerged as the most prominent far-right extremists to have taken part in the assault on the Capitol. Prosecutors have collected reams of evidence against them, including encrypted cellphone chats and recordings of online meetings. They have charged its members not only with forcing their way into the building in a military-style “stack,” but also with stationing an armed “quick reaction force” at a hotel in Virginia to be ready to rush into Washington if needed.
This is not a common felony on which to indict someone. This shows the seriousness with which AG Garland is building the case. By charging these eleven with seditious conspiracy, it will pull in anyone else involved in the plot. Anyone higher up who communicated with them, who paid them, is by definition a co-conspirator.

You don't make a charge like this without having a mountain of evidence. This is not a case you want to take to court and lose, ruining all the other cases which you're building on based on this one. What has Merrick Garland been doing? This. And this is what's even more amazing:
The great and the good on Twitter, used to four years of the Trump White House leaking like a sieve, assumed that because nothing was coming out of Justice, that it must not be doing anything. Again, as I wrote the other week, people have been conditioned by crime dramas to expect a resolution at the end of the hour. If you want to make a real comparison to a drama, think The Wire, not Law & Order. This takes time. It can last months. And if the ultimate goal is to get the top echelons, including Donald Trump, then you had best make sure that everything is dotted and crossed.

But, as if that weren't enough, this happened:
While I doubt this was coordinated between AG Garland and the committee, it's still a 1-2 punch. It's doubtful that these companies are going to contest the subpoenas. The committee knows what it's looking for, and has a good idea of where to find it.

As we head into the third week of the new year, despite the caterwauling of the good and the great, things are heating up and speeding up. Hang on to your hats, kids.
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