Kenneth Douglas Gerdts put up $1,000 and was released, prompting a press release from the Tenino Police Department, calling attention to the outrageous soft-on-crime approach to a suspect that officers believe to be a serious threat.
While Thurston County Superior Court Judge Allyson Zipp noted there was a “substantial danger” that the man “will commit a violent crime,” she decided to release him after less than 21 hours in jail.
Ethan Nordean of Washington got 18 years. Nordean went by the nickname “Rufio Panman” and was a well-known Proud Boy for his frequent brawls with antifa activists in the Pacific Northwest.
His sentence is one of the longest handed down by U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly to Capitol riot defendants. Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia, was also given 18 years in prison earlier this year.
After a grand jury issued an indictment against him, Nordean has been incarcerated since 2021, first in SeaTac and later at the federal detention facility in DC. New York lawyer Urooj Rahman, who pleaded guilty to lighting a gasoline-filled bottle of Bud Light and throwing it, got 15 months for firebombing a police car during the BLM riots over George Floyd.
Jord Meachum of Pleasant Valley, Utah, who was 19 when he walked nonviolently in the Capitol, has committed suicide. His obituary reads “Jord worked on the family’s ranch, enjoyed riding horses, and doing anything outdoors. Listening to music was his life and young kids were drawn to him. He spent summers working at Leader Creek Fisheries in Naknek, Alaska…” Rest his soul.
Donald Trump has been charged with 91 counts, including a Georgia criminal indictment accusing him of trying to overturn his 2020 election.
Fulton County DA Fani Willis regularly questioned election results and used her office to push unfounded election conspiracies.
The judge on Trump’s case, Tanya S. Chutkan, an Obama appointee, is the granddaughter of Frank Hill, a Jamaican communist revolutionary, jailed for “subversive activities,’ according to the New York Post. Chutkan has raised suspicions among Republicans over what they insist is politically motivated bias.
Despite Florida resident Connie Meggs losing everything after January 6 (including both of her parents), and spending 45 days in a Florida jail, was denied release after her February 2021 arrest followed by 2 1/2 years on home detention wearing an ankle monitor, Judge Amit Priyavadan Mehta was not finished inflicting pain on the grandmother of three. Meggs, often uncontrollably sobbing, read a lengthy letter of apology to the court while angrily blaming her husband for choosing the Oath Keepers over their family. “I’m a good person,” Meggs told Mehta as her son and grandchildren broke down in the gallery. “Please don’t take their mother and grandmother away from them.”
Mehta still insisted Meggs must pay a further price for not understanding the ‘broader context” of her involvement in the events of January 6. “We don’t have January 6, it does not happen, without people like you,” Mehta scolded.
Connie Meggs, a churchgoing, patriotic grandmother is now branded a domestic terrorist.
There are 667 District Court judges throughout the United States. Obama and Biden have appointed 371 with 63 vacancies that Biden will fill before the end of his term. Between Obama and Biden, they will have appointed 434 judges or two thirds of all District Court seats.
In November 2018, Chief Justice John Roberts defended the federal judiciary saying there are no “Obama judges” as the president had claimed.
“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts said, “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”
He went on to say an “independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”
Currently among Circuit Court of Appeals judges, nearly half have been appointed by Republicans, as have six of the nine Supreme Court justices.
If Biden or any Democrat wins the 2024 election, he or she will appoint upwards of 170 District Court judges and nearly 35+ Circuit Court of Appeals judges by 2028, resulting in as many as 595 District Court judges, or 89% of the bench, and 126 Circuit Court of Appeals judges, or 70% of the bench.
Additionally, the two oldest and most conservative Supreme Court justices, Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito, will be 80 and 78 years old respectively by 2028, opening up the possibility of the Democrats appointing their replacements. ◆
