JFK headed back to Dallas

[Richard Smith]

The jury found that the FBI concocted the fake plot to kidnap Whitmer.  They found a few numbskulls who didn't like her and set up a "plot" to kidnap her.  These guys were just pawns in the FBI's desperate effort to make a political arrest that harmed Trump.  As a result, the jury did not convict any of the defendants.  To suggest otherwise is the disinformation.  The facts speak for themselves and can be easily verified by anyone who does a one second Google search.  That doesn't fit the desired narrative, however.  So keep peddling a falsheood.  In addition, there are not ten people in the entire world who believed JFK was coming back from the dead.  Not even mentally ill people.  That is a fake story given social media attention to make Trump supporters look like loons.


 "A federal jury failed to convict four men accused of plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer."

[Rick Plant]

The above is blatant propaganda. The fact is, defense attorneys use any bogus excuse to get their clients off the hook and that's what we have here. There was no "fake plot" as the above nonsense says. These two right wing radicals plotted to kidnap Governor Whitmer. The only argument in their defense was "entrapment" and that's not a "fake plot". Sad that people need to post disinformation to push their false political narratives. 

Feds move forward on case against ‘leaders’ of Whitmer kidnap plot

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Federal prosecutors are moving forward with their case against two men accused of leading a plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer after their trial ended with a hung jury.

The attorneys for Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr. last month filed a motion to dismiss all charges against the men. But federal prosecutors have responded with a motion asking the judge to deny that request.

“The evidence adduced at trial was sufficient to support the defendants’ conviction as to all the charged offenses,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils R. Kessler wrote in his response.

A hearing is scheduled for June 14 before Chief U.S. District Judge Robert J. Jonker.

"The parties should be prepared to address logistical questions regarding duration and timing of re-trial if the court denies the (acquittal) motion,” the judge wrote.

On April 8, following a 20-day trial, the jury deadlocked on the cases against Fox and Croft while finding co-defendants Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta not guilty.

The feds said the men started the conspiracy in June 2020 at a meeting of militia members in Ohio. Their plan, they said, evolved to kidnapping the governor from her cottage in Elk Rapids, blowing up a bridge or two to slow down police, then taking her in a boat, either to strand her in Lake Michigan or to Wisconsin to face trial and execution.

They were angry, the feds said, over Whitmer’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and hoped to ignite a second Civil War.

Defense attorneys argued that the FBI, working with informants, entrapped their clients.

“Government agents may not originate a criminal design,” Fox’s attorney, Christopher Gibbons, wrote in his motion to acquit. “Yet that is precisely what occurred here. In this case, the Government produced evidence that Adam Fox was prone to speaking offensively, making objectively anti-government statements, and juvenile remarks casually advocating violence.”

The feds, in their response, argued the FBI did not entrap the men.

"Both Fox and Croft espoused anti-government action long before they met any government agents or informants,” Kessler wrote in his motion. “Croft had been advocating a ‘second American revolution’ (including tattooing his body with insurrectionist slogans) for years, and proposed hanging a governor to destabilize the states like ‘dominoes.”

“The jury saw Fox likewise broadcast his desire to ‘kick off the boogaloo’ (initiate a second civil war) before he met any government agents or sources,” he wrote.

The feds argued the men provided no evidence that the idea to kidnap Whitmer came from the government.

“On the contrary, Croft told the plotters in Dublin, Ohio, that he had received permission directly from God,” Kessler wrote. “Fox proposed storming the Capitol and trading hostages for the Governor the first time he met CHS (Informant) Dan and the other potential recruits Croft sent his way.”

U.S. Attorney Andrew Birge has said he plans to try Fox and Croft again.

https://www.woodtv.com/news/michigan/feds-move-forward-on-case-against-leaders-of-whitmer-kidnap-plot/

[Rick Plant]

Yes, QAnon is a Republican Trump cult. 
 
Confederate Flags, Conspiracies, and the Ghost of JFK Jr.: What I Saw at Trump’s Bananas Texas Rally

It’s part roadshow and part religious revival, but the show is a grift and the religion being revived is fascism


Donald Trump speaks to a crowd at a rally at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds, on Saturday, Jan. 29, 2022, in Conroe, Texas.

Conroe, Texas — The Donald Trump train made its second stop here this Saturday with a coterie of politicians, conspiracy theorists, and grifters in tow. It came on the heels of a Lara Trump rally in north Texas this past Thursday and just two weeks after a similar rally in Phoenix, Arizona. Meanwhile, six hours south at the border, the disgraced QAnon peddling general Michael Flynn and other far-right figures held an event at the exact same time followed up by a caravan to the border on Sunday. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, who spoke at a QAnon conference in Dallas last July, was featured as a speaker at both events.

This confluence of events in Texas demonstrates the sort of far-right politics that is coalescing here: paranoid, obsessed with or tolerant of bigoted conspiracy theories, eager to appeal to violence, and convinced they’re fighting against a secret Marxist plot. If this sounds familiar, it’s because similar politics emerged during the Weimar period in Germany, were honed by the Nazis, and later trafficked into mainstream politics via the John Birch Society — one of the sponsors of the event at the border.

Dozens of politicians from across the state and country turned out for the rally, seeking to ride on Trump’s political coattails. Governor Greg Abbott, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, Attorney General Ken Paxton, and State Senator Dawn Buckingham all spoke glowingly of Trump and touted their endorsements from the former president.

We were in one of the reddest counties in one of the reddest states, and it showed: When I arrived at the press check-in station, the first thing I saw was a merchandise vendor with a Confederate flag — the banner of a nation that lasted only 4 years before being routed out of existence — that says “Come And Take It.” It was set up directly across from a wooden cross.

Having attended the prior rally in Arizona and the Lara Trump event on Thursday, a twisted sense of deja vu came over me when I got into the venue and began to hear the same songs, watch the same videos, listen to the same speeches, and see the same people. There were many familiar faces — election conspiracy peddling MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and the JFK Jr. obsessed QAnon cult leader Michael Protzman — and in some instances, near word for word repeats of previous events.

Trump opened the Houston rally in the exact same manner as he did in Arizona: saying it’s the biggest rally ever, that the media is fake, and that they won’t turn their cameras around to show the crowd size. He even repeated the false claim about a 29 mile long line of cars, but this time it was 30 miles long. The crowd began to jeer at the press. When I turned around to take a photo of the overflow crowd, someone flipped me off.

From inside the press pen I was able to observe Michael Protzman, aka Negative 48, and over one hundred of his followers secure prime seats directly to the left of the stage. The Protzmanians arrived over a day early and began lining up for the event the night before, just as they had in Arizona. The group was in rare form, dancing and singing together. They wore matching red ties and shirts depicting Donald Trump, JFK, and JFK Jr. Prior to the event, Protzman predicted to his group that who they would be seeing speak at the event was not actually Trump but JFK in disguise — a claim they’ve made before regarding the Rolling Stones concert in Dallas, Texas.

When I approached Protzman and asked him what he expected to see, he responded cryptically. “You never know,” he said, before bopping off to tend to his flock and dance with one of his lieutenants, Stephen Tenner, who at one point shook hands with Mike Lindell. As of late the Protzmanians have taken to compiling a variety of non-standard calendars to ensure they have every combination of possible dates to check against their “decoding” of the numerology. This is because none of their dates or predictions have panned out.

The entire scene — replete with more merch vendors than a Grateful Dead concert — made me think of the Church of Unlimited Devotion, the infamous subset of Deadheads who believed Jerry Garcia was the second coming of Jesus. One of the central claims of Protzman’s belief system sounds awfully similar: JFK is the second coming of Jesus Christ. They also traffick in fascist propaganda and Holocaust denial.

The Protzmanians, like the Church of Unlimited Devotion, are a relatively small sect. Neither are fully representative of the larger movements from which they emerged, but they demonstrate what can happen when magical thinking and cults of personality collide and provide us an understanding of how far some folks have fallen off the map. Even if only a little over 100 out of the thousands of people at the Trump rally truly believe that JFK Jr. is secretly alive or somehow related to Christ, many attendees seem to be willing to believe other things that aren’t true, like that refugee immigration from crisis-stricken countries is a part of a sinister Marxist plot or that murders have gone up one thousand and nine hundred percent.

This strain of political thought, particularly the notion of a secret Marxist plot, isn’t new in this country. The paranoid anti-communism of McCarthyism gave way to the John Birch Society, which has sought to mainstream its far-right ideology for decades. In Conroe, I witnessed the fruits of their labor. Hats and shirts for sale that simply say “God, Guns, and Trump” and speeches that I can only describe as full-blown Bircherism.

Without a hint of irony, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said the upcoming elections are a race between “Patriots and Traitors,” suggesting that the side that isn’t on trial for seditious conspiracy is the traitorous one. Lt. Governor Dan Patrick said the election was stolen and that Marxists want to “take away the country from us.” Gov. Abbott made an abstruse comparison between Biden’s response to the Russian army at the Ukraine border to the Texas-Mexico border, doubling down on the idea that immigration is a part of a planned invasion. The crowd chanted “build that wall,” which Biden has continued to do in some parts.

When Trump finally took the stage after hours of patience, the temperature had dropped significantly. My toes were cold and my soles regretted the choice of cowboy boots. Trump repeated much of what he said in Arizona but mixed in some of his trademark stream of consciousness riffs to keep things fresh. Less than an hour into his speech, the crowd started to thin out. I’d heard it all before, so I decided to follow suit.

(Indeed, it was more than an hour into his rambling speech when Trump offered something new: teasing a 2024 presidential run and dangling pardons for Jan. 6 rioters if he retakes office.)

As I approached the main exit, Trump was talking about Hillary Clinton. “Lock her up!” the crowd chanted. A woman walking beside me said to no one in particular, “Clinton’s a witch, that’s why they’re never going to lock her up.”

And as I approached the parking lot by the nearby baseball fields where I’d parked, I overheard a conversation between two older women. “How does Trump expect us to stand around for five hours?” one said to the other, referring to the ban on any form of lawn chair at the event. “By the time he started talking, we were hurting.” For the first time all day, I agreed with what I was hearing.

Later that evening, I went back to a pizza place by my hotel about 40 minutes south of Conroe in an upscale suburb of Houston called The Woodlands. I got to chatting with my server, a young man with a ponytail and glasses. When I told him I’d been in Conroe, his eye twitched. He said he grew up in Conroe and that his eye had twitched for a reason. When I told him what I had seen there, he asked me if I wanted a free shot of whiskey. I wish I had asked for two.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-texas-rally-conspiracies-ghost-of-jfk-jr-1292592/

[Richard Smith]

The leftists don't like the First or Second Amendments.  They intimidate federal judges and want to deprive them and their families of protection to influence their judicial opinions.  And now they want to defame the jury process?  The fact remains that the FBI concocted a fake plot to entrap a few numbskulls simply based on their political dislike of Whitmer.  They did this purely for political motivations.  There was a trial in which both sides had an opportunity to present their arguments.  And contrary to falsehoods stated the jury found them not guilty.  This is simply an undeniable fact that anyone can confirm with a one second Google search.  The disinformation is to suggest otherwise.  What is humorous is that some folks are so invested in their hatred of Trump that they can't allow their conclusions to be influenced by the undeniable evidence and actual facts. 

"A federal jury failed to convict four men accused of plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer."

[Rick Plant]

Actually it's the radical right who doesn't like the First Amendment because they are banning books.

The propaganda above his hilarious. No matter how many times it gets repeated it will never be true.

The feds are bringing a new case against the kidnappers.

Feds move forward on case against ‘leaders’ of Whitmer kidnap plot

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Federal prosecutors are moving forward with their case against two men accused of leading a plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer after their trial ended with a hung jury.

https://www.woodtv.com/news/michigan/feds-move-forward-on-case-against-leaders-of-whitmer-kidnap-plot/

[Rick Plant]

These deranged QAnon loons are absolutely nuts. These Republican QAnon conspiracy theorists are running for office to take over our government to push these insane conspiracy theories.

Trump is backing a full-fledged QAnon extremist in Ohio
https://www.salon.com/2022/06/14/is-backing-a-full-fledged-qanon-extremist-in-ohio_partner/

JFK QAnon group harassed gun violence protestors in Dallas, claiming Uvalde shooting was ‘all an act’

Members of the JFK QAnon group verbally and physically harassed March For Our Lives participants in Dallas, shouting at them that the government staged the Uvalde mass shooting.


JFK QAnon cult members harassed gun violence protestors, shouting at them that the Uvalde shooting was 'all an act'.

Members of the JFK QAnon group harassed March For Our Lives participants in downtown Dallas Saturday, shouting at them that the mass shooting in Uvalde on May 24—in which a gunman killed 19 elementary-school-aged children and two teachers—was orchestrated by the federal government.

Members of the group gathered at Dealey Plaza Saturday after their leader, Michael Protzman, predicted earlier that week that JFK would reappear there that day to reinstate Donald Trump as president and begin executions of the alleged global cabal of pe**philic, blood-drinking liberal elites Protzman claims runs the world.

Organizers of Dallas’ March For Our Lives rally had told participants to gather at Dealey Plaza Saturday morning before marching to nearby Dallas City Hall. Members of the two groups encountered one another early Saturday afternoon when several March For Our Lives protestors returned to Dealey Plaza after the march.

“We were just asking each other if we could take pictures of each others’ signs,” said Gabrielle Gonzalez, 20, of her and other gun violence protestors who’d reunited at Dealey after marching to city hall. “Then one of [the members] came up to me and were like ‘what do your signs say, are you on the opposite side of the fence?’ and we were like, ‘we’re with March For Our Lives,’” Gonzalez explained.

“Then [the QAnon member] was like, ‘did you know that Uvalde has been closed for years? It was fake, it was all an act, it was actors and actresses.’ Then two more [QAnon members] came up and were like ‘none of these are real, mass shootings don’t happen,” Gonzalez continued.

“And I asked them if they’d like to tell Maite Rodriguez’s parents that,” said Gonzalez.

Maite Rodriguez was one of 19 kids killed by 18-year-old Uvalde shooter Salvador Ramos. Maite was only identifiable by her green Converse sneakers due to the severe mutilation of her body caused by the shooter’s AR-15 rifle. 

The confrontation in Dealey Plaza is rooted in a QAnon conspiracy that has spread across far-right social media forums alleging liberal elites stage mass shootings to divert attention from their alleged misdeeds. Multiple videos and posts pushing the false conspiracy have appeared on the JFK QAnon group's Telegram channel, which has more than 68,000 subscribers. 

"False flag" conspiracies began gaining traction among a number of right-wing groups in the aftermath of the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary—a massacre in which a lone gunman shot and killed 20 students and six teachers at school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. Allegations claiming the federal government's involvement in the attack were initially spread by Austin-based far-right provocateur Alex Jones, who has since trumpeted similar conspiracies regarding the May 14 attack by a lone gunman at a Buffalo, New York grocery store that left 10 dead.

https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/JFK-QAnon-cult-harassed-gun-violence-protestors-17238529.php

[Rick Plant]

The QAnon-JFK Cult Is Pivoting to Crypto

QAnon influencer Michael Protzman, known to his followers as Negative 48, is teaching followers to invest in a cryptocurrency network.

Her mother had been kicking herself since last November for missing her chance to go to Dallas to see John F. Kennedy resurrected from the dead.

But then she heard that QAnon influencer Michael Protzman was once again calling on his followers to make yet another trek to Dallas to see JFK return, and she was determined not to miss out.

“She wanted to go in November but did not have the means,” said her daughter Linda, who is using a pseudonym to protect her mother’s privacy. “She was very upset that she didn’t go, but made every excuse as to why it didn’t happen.”

Last week Linda’s mother “picked up and left” for Dallas, and within hours of arriving, Protzman, known to his followers as Negative 48, was teaching her how to invest in crypto.

“She called me this afternoon and told me that they are hosting classes on how to invest,” Linda told VICE News on Monday, referencing a cryptocurrency network that has been promoted within Telegram channels linked to Protzman and his followers.

Linda’s mother was joined by up to 100 other people in Dallas this weekend, with most of the group staying at the Hyatt Regency in the center of the city. 

Protzman has spent the last seven months living off his followers' donations and financial support to cover his accommodation costs given that he was living out of his car prior to initially traveling to Dallas last November.

But this time Protzman made it clear in an audio chat on his Telegram channel that those without money shouldn’t bother coming to Dallas and said that people should plan to be in the city for longer than just a few days.

As well as hosting classes for the people who have traveled to Dallas, Protzman’s Telegram channels have been sharing videos giving his 70,000 subscribers detailed instructions on how they too can invest money in the cryptocurrency network, which is linked to a broader conspiracy about a coming global financial reset.

Protzman made his declaration that no one without enough money should travel to Dallas because the latest predicted return of JFK on Saturday never happened, and now Protzman has pushed the date of the former president’s return—which he predicts will trigger “10 days of darkness”—to June 24.

“She told me that Michael has moved the dates again, and when I questioned if she saw Jesus, she called me a satanist and the devil and then promptly hung up,” Linda said, adding that her mother has completely changed her personality since starting to follow Protzman’s online conspiracies last year. “My real mother would never do that.”

Video of Michael Protzman: Watch: https://twitter.com/i/status/1535677990310486018

After JFK Jr. or his dad failed to materialize at Dealey Plaza (again), Michael Protzman aka Negative 48 and his followers went to AT&T Plaza in downtown Dallas, where I first saw the group back in November 2021.

Listen to this video. It's barely comprehensible: https://twitter.com/i/status/1535791833393303552

Over the course of the weekend, Protzman once again made his followers spend hours waiting in downtown Dallas for JFK’s return. While they were waiting, some passed the time by harassing people attending a March for Our Lives event by telling them that the Uvalde school shooting was a hoax.

Like many family members of those under Protzman’s spell, Linda is now weighing up whether or not he should abandon her mother completely. “I don’t know who this person has become. I’m torn between letting go of the relationship and putting up with it to keep them in my life,” she said.

Protzman has destroyed dozens of families over the course of the last seven months, with many members of his inner circle now left with nowhere to go, even if they did want to leave the cult.

This has led to rising tensions between certain members of the group and during last weekend in Dallas, there were some angry clashes between Protzman’s group and a splinter group known as the “Scooby-Doo Crew” who were kicked out by Protzman over money issues.

During one face-off in the lobby of Hyatt hotel, one of Protzman’s most loyal followers struck a member of the splinter group in the face. The growing anger is also playing out in increasingly unhinged audio chats on Telegram where some members are making overt threats against opposing groups.

Watch: https://twitter.com/i/status/1535410993978699776

Watch: https://twitter.com/2022_Karma/status/1535137183564148736

Shelly was kicked out of the cult, at the end of January. The Scooby doo crew have been following them around for months, doxxing and making up conspiracies about Protzman’s inner circle.
With them all heading back to Dallas a clash was inevitable.

Watch: https://twitter.com/2022_Karma/status/1535137183564148736

“I keep saying, something is eventually going to happen, one of them is gonna snap. I just don't know which one,” Karma, an open-source researcher who has been closely tracking this group since the beginning, told VICE News.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/akew5p/qanon-jfk-crypto