15 Apr Personally…
Hello My Very Fine Friends,
This week our Thursday show guests were a not-at-all-famous couple named Jalise and Mark Middleton, with a powerful story to tell.
They live on a farm in Texas and are facing potentially decades in prison because of a short interaction with the Metro Police on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. This less-than-two-minutes long interaction started, from the Middleton’s view, when a DC Metro Police Department officer, totally unprovoked, attacked them from behind as they stood with eyes closed and heads bowed in prayer, outside on public grounds on the Capitol. The officer(s) repeatedly struck them with an object, then pepper-sprayed them. After escaping from what they saw as the officers’ assault, the Middletons rinsed the spray from their eyes and left the Capitol. Listen to their story.
Months later, the FBI raided their farm with no notice, using a tank-type vehicle with battering ram at the ready, and nearly two dozen heavily armed agents. When the Middletons asked the FBI agents why they didn’t just inform them they were going to be charged and ask them to turn themselves in, as is very common, an FBI agent said essentially “we were told to do it this way.”
The Middletons are charged with nine crimes, a combination of felonies and misdemeanors. They’ve been urged by the government to plead guilty, and a family member was pressured/threatened by the DOJ in order to coerce them to do so, but they are standing their ground. They won’t plead when they feel certain of their innocence.
Even leaving aside the facts surrounding the Middleton’s relatively innocuous engagement with the police that day, this case should be of great concern to all Americans.
That is because the DOJ appears to be in a pattern, not just with the Middletons but with other J6 defendants, of overzealously prosecuting them (even those who engaged in no violence which is almost all of them), conducting unnecessarily intimidating arrests, and manifestly overcharging them.
Why? It seems that the DOJ is determined to stifle the voices of those who question the 2020 election outcome, whose voices are also those who support Donald Trump. This mindset has infected various police agencies, DOJ lawyers, FBI agents, judges, DC Democrat-majority juries, and the media who report on them. The powers that be in our American justice system simply will not tolerate continued dispute of the legitimacy of the 202o election, or continued support for Donald Trump, regardless of how much information mounts that is causing reasonable people to doubt the honesty of our elections.
The insurrection narrative has crumbled from complete lack of proof or authenticity. The embedded presence of now 40 FBI agents in the midst of the protesters, the fact that the very heavy Capitol doors were opened from the inside, the fact that Nancy Pelosi declined President Trump’s suggestion of added security that day, the bizarre and suspicious fact that no one has been arrested for the endlessly replayed window-breaking at the Capitol, the failure to pursue charges against Ray Epps or Officer Michael Byrd, the release by Tucker Carlson of video showing many people walking around calmly and peacefully inside the Capitol and Capitol police officers calmly and cheerfully walking Jacob Chansley around inside the Capitol, ALL reveal more of the truth of that day.
Yet with all that, the DOJ recently informed the Chief Judge of the DC District Court in writing that it intends to bring charges against about 1,000 MORE Americans. The FBI’s and DOJ’s rabid fervor in hunting down every potential J6 defendant, now over two years after the J6 protest, is another indicia of the political and coercive nature of these prosecutions, aimed seemingly at punishing political opponents.
Would the same conduct the Middletons engaged in on January 6th be the cause for arrest and prosecution and decades in prison looming, if they had engaged in that conduct at an Antifa or BLM protest? Are there any BLM or Antifa rioters who so violently assaulted America’s cities still living in fear of the knock at the door or the FBI’s battering ram treatment?
I doubt it.
While over 10,000 were arrested in connection with the George Floyd protests, which inflicted misery on 140 cities for over a year, studies showed that in a very large number of cases, charges were never pursued. At least 90% of the cases in major cities were dropped without prosecution. And the damage caused by the Antifa/BLM protests was in the range of $2 billion, as contrasted with the $1.5 million in damages on one day on January 6th.
The conclusion that today’s DOJ and FBI are politically motivated to pursue every charge possible against any J6 protester, while mostly dropping charges or never arresting those involved in the more massive, longer, larger, and more deadly and destructive Antifa/BLM riots around the country, is inescapable. And frightening. And unacceptable.
That’s why the Middleton’s case should be of great concern to all Americans.
Speak Truth About America.
Facts Matter. Truth Matters. America Matters.
I’ll talk to you next week. I can’t wait!
Because America Matters,
DebbieG