(Photo by Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Libertarian champion Rand Paul is in a dither today after learning that the United States Attorney’s Office in D.C. won’t be pursuing charges in the case of the people who “attacked” him after the RNC while they protested on behalf of Breonna Taylor.
Well, that’s not exactly true. The only person who could remotely be charged with anything was already arrested. But Paul’s concern is the BIG picture. The senator took to Twitter to complain that Michael Sherwin — a prosecutor hand-selected and installed without Senate approval by Bill Barr by the way — is standing athwart the demands of justice because this “attack” is only the tip of the iceberg in a vast interstate criminal conspiracy funded by… someone. We’ll just assume he means George Soros and forgot which anti-Semitic reference to make here.
It certainly sounds like he’s got an airtight case. I mean… how could there be so many Black people in a Washington D.C. without having been flown in specifically for this? And how could they have “fresh new clothes” without the aid of a mysterious benefactor? If you’re playing a white supremacist rhetoric drinking game, you need to call an ambulance right now.
This is, of course, a non-story. But to the dingbat brigade, Rand is asking important questions! A search for today’s “Rand Paul” news finds Fox News, the New York Post, the Washington Examiner, The Blaze, Newsmax all hot on the trail of the vast conspiracy that’s now managed to ensnare the Justice Department. No credible outlet is touching it. Except to troll him, of course.
Here’s the video of the event:
The only thing approaching “violence” is when a cop uses his bike as a battering ram to hit someone — presumably the man they ultimately arrested — and gets pushed back for it. It’s hard to imagine a more mundane and toothless “attack.”
And that’s what makes this all so galling. Rand Paul got the hell kicked out of him by his neighbor in an attack that left him with broken ribs so he knows what a proper attack looks like. Wading through protestors and being within arms length of someone being pushed is not an “attack” and it’s certainly not an interstate criminal conspiracy.
Though DHS Secretary cosplayer Chad Wolf is on board with the conspiracy:
“This is something that I have talked to the AG personally about,” Wolf told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson in early September, saying the department was focused on “targeting and investigating the head of these organizations, [and] the individuals that are paying for these individuals to move across the country.
“What we know, Tucker, is that we have seen groups and individuals move from Portland to other parts of the country,” he continued.
A reminder that the Justice Department may be broken but still clings tenuously to a reality that the rest of the government abandoned long ago. After all, they have enough phony voter fraud conspiracies to look into to get bogged down in phony protest conspiracies. PRIORITIES!
The irony of Paul’s situation is that he’s one of the very few Republicans who could have directly engaged that protest. He actually introduced the Justice for Breonna Taylor Act and consistently opposes the no-knock warrants that ultimately killed her. If he just had the courage to stand up and say, “I’m actually with you and I’m also disgusted by the rest of my Party on this issue” he might have gotten somewhere.
It’s also a little weird that an organized conspiracy would target Rand Paul on the only issue where he was plausibly aligned with the crowd. You’d think the big money folks behind the secretive Antifa movement would have done a better job of planning on that one.
Almost makes you think this is all nonsense being spouted by a dolt trying to land a 5-minute hit on Newsmax tonight, huh?
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.