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August 25, 2013
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A former North Carolina police officer joined the Oath Keepers just days before the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. On Monday, she was sentenced for her involvement, reported The Charlotte Observer.
This comes as part of a group conviction of several members of the far-right group.
"Laura Steele of Thomasville was among a group of Oath Keepers who used a military 'stack' formation to storm up the Capitol steps and into the congressional building on Jan. 6, 2021, photographs in court filings show," reported Michael Gordon. "On Monday, a Washington, D.C., jury convicted Steele and three co-defendants of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, a federal crime that carries up to 20 years in prison, multiple media outlets reported. Steele, along with Sandra Parker, Connie Meggs and William Isaacs, was also found guilty of a host of lesser charges, including destruction of government property and conspiracy to prevent members of Congress from discharging their duties by certifying the results of the 2020 election."
"The verdict is the government’s latest blow against the Oath Keepers, a right-wing militia group with strong N.C. ties that is accused of taking a leading role in planning and executing the Capitol attack," said the report. "The unprecedented violence, which was unleashed by a mob of Donald Trump supporters enraged by the former president’s baseless claims of a stolen election, has been tied to five deaths and injuries to some 140 police officers. More than 1,000 arrests have been made in the two-year investigation of the riot. Steele is one of least 28 North Carolina defendants, several with police and military ties."
Steele, the report noted, was a "late addition to the cause" who only applied to join the militia group "days" before the attack took place.
The Oath Keepers convicted on Monday immediately asked for a mistrial, only for the judge to deny the motion as the trial descended into pandemonium over revelations that some jurors had access to footage that hadn't been allowed in as evidence.
This comes after Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and five of his associates were found guilty of seditious conspiracy.
EXCLUSIVE: ‘Our best face’: Jan. 6 rally organizers coordinated with White House and militant Trump backers
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The American right has found a quick and easy way to push back against critics. When the going gets tough, they’re turning to what’s become their go-to trope: “Soros-backed.”
Manhattan District Alvin Bragg, who is investigating former President Donald Trump over alleged hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, is now at the center of GOP efforts to link Holocaust survivor and progressive Hungarian Jewish billionaire philanthropist George Soros to an accusation tied to a litany of conspiracy theories and historic antisemitic canards.
But he's not the only one.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was quick to play the played the “Soros-backed” card last year in an announcement that he was suspending state attorney Andrew Warren over his views on abortion and trans youth. The likely 2024 presidential candidate disparaged Warren as a “Soros-backed state attorney.”
The Washington Post’s Philip Bump, in a column Monday titled “What it means to be ‘Soros-backed," said that “it’s worth reflecting on what earned Bragg and Warren this appellation — and why it’s become so useful for Republicans and others on the right to deploy it,” noting that the term’s vagueness makes it particularly useful.
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“There’s no reason to think that Bragg is targeting Trump or the Trump Organization because he was indirectly backed by Soros or because he is unusually left-wing,” Bump argues.
“On the other hand, it’s quite obvious that the phrase ‘Soros-backed’ is meant, as with Warren, to cast each as illegitimate and biased.”
The “Soros-backed” trope is not unique to American politics, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
“In far-right circles worldwide, Soros’ philanthropy often is recast as fodder for outsized conspiracy theories, including claims that he masterminds specific global plots or manipulates particular events to further his goals,” the ADL’s website says.
“In the United States, Soros long has been a favored target of the so-called alt right and other right-wing extremists. Their online echo chambers reverberate with conspiracies about Soros, accusing him of attempting to perpetrate “white genocide” and push his own malevolent agenda. In a report published earlier this year that analyzed antisemitic speech on Twitter, ADL found that Soros figured prominently in a significant number of antisemitic tweets.
“One noteworthy allegation claimed that Soros was responsible for the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in August 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Other tweets referred to his Jewish heritage in pejorative terms and claimed that he’s trying to undermine all of Western civilization.”
The trope has become “useful shorthand” for the right, according to Bump.
“The real reason Bragg and Warren are dismissed as ‘Soros-backed,’” Bump writes, “of course, is that it’s a useful shorthand for several of the right’s favorite targets.”
Added Bump: “Saying “Soros-backed” simply means 'unacceptably left-wing' with no further delineation required.”
ALSO IN THE NEWS: GOP's Hawley flattened in brutal profanity-laced column for berating St. Louis reporter
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Donald Trump's attorney general, Bill Barr, appointed special counsel John Durham to "investigate the investigators." It was all part of Trump's demand to probe Robert Mueller's investigation into the Russia scandal that resulted in the indictment of 34 people.
Durham never found any wrongdoing in Mueller's investigation, and even his indictments were dismissed. One former FBI agent pleaded guilty to giving a false statement. He never went to prison.
Documents on the Justice Department website detail the accounting of how the $2,076,068 Durham budget was spent. According to one excerpt, Durham spent over $200,000 on travel expenditures during the six months that he should have been preparing for trial, remarked former Mueller prosecutor on Twitter.
"Why is Durham investigation spending over $200,000 on travel in a 6-month period in 2022, especially since they were supposed to be in DC (preparing to lose their second of two federal cases)?" Andrew Weissmann asked.
From April 1, 2022, to Sept. 30, 2022, Durham columnists were already writing that he was being humiliated.
In the middle of Sept. 2022, CNN reported that Durham's own prosecutors were already jumping ship.
"Top Durham prosecutor Andrew DeFilippis – who led the team’s case against a Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer earlier this year, which ended in a swift acquittal – was supposed to handle another trial next month, but instead is leaving the Justice Department for a job at a private law firm," CNN said citing its sources. "DeFilippis in recent months was at one point working on writing a report on Durham’s findings, which will be submitted to Attorney General Merrick Garland."
While there isn't a final report from Durham's team that has become public, the way that there was in Mueller's case, Durham has resigned from the position, having failed in his task.
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