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Conservatives are cool with reparations—but only for Jan. 6 rioters



Conservatives are finally backing reparations. Yes, it’s time for some
financial and systemic atonement on behalf of the United States government. No,
not for Black people descended from enslaved individuals or indigenous people
whose land was stolen, silly. We’re talking about the real victims here: Jan. 6
rioters.

Mark McCloskey, who you may remember as one half of the St. Louis couple who
brandished guns at Black Lives Matter protesters marching on their street in
June 2020, appeared in a Twitter Spaces event with the Gateway Pundit on Aug.
28. During this, McCloskey said he had met with top Department of Justice
officials about setting up a “voluntary nonjudicial resolution committee” that
would dole out cash to President Donald Trump’s pet insurrectionists to repay
them for the terrible harm they suffered.

McCloskey isn’t being at all subtle about this, telling whatever J6ers
happened to be listening in over at Elon Musk’s Nazi site that his job as their
lawyer was to “turn your losses into dollar bills.”

What losses would those be, exactly?




 



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This latest effort shows that there is no amount of solicitude or repayment
that will ever be enough for the Jan. 6 insurrectionists. It isn’t enough that
they all received pardons, even those who attacked members of law enforcement.
It isn’t enough that the Trump administration decided some rioters are entitled
to refunds of the fines and restitution they paid as part of their convictions,
a stance at odds with the separation of powers. Once money is deposited into
the Treasury, which is what happens with fines and restitution, it can only be
withdrawn by Congress through the appropriations process, so it isn’t at all
clear how it will work to give the rioters that money.



Never fear, though. McCloskey has just the person in mind to run this, someone
whose keen legal acumen will no doubt find a way forward: U.S. Attorney for the
District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro.

Just look at how well she has handled Trump’s attempted takeover of
Washington, D.C. Doesn’t every U.S. attorney have federal magistrate judges
saying things like “It is without a doubt the most illegal search I've ever
seen in my life” in regards to charges their office brought? Surely it’s a sign
of true skill and savvy to have federal grand juries repeatedly refuse to
indict people on overblown, ridiculous felony charges brought by one’s office,
yes?

Of course, it wouldn’t even really be necessary for Pirro to do much of
anything, given that the DOJ already employs both Ed Martin and Jared Wise.

Martin, who was supposed to have Pirro’s current gig before proving too toxic
for even Senate Republicans to confirm, is the DOJ’s pardon attorney these
days. There’s no question where Martin’s loyalties lie when it comes to the
Jan. 6 insurrectionists. He adores them so much that he engaged in the most
wildly unethical behavior for a prosecutor imaginable when he dismissed charges
against a rioter when he was still listed as their defense counsel of record.
And it’s not like Martin needs any convincing about reparations. He’s been
banging that drum for months, saying the insurrectionists should get “a big pot
of money, like the asbestos money we got for asbestos victims.”




 



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Then there’s Wise, a former FBI agent who now serves as an adviser in the
DOJ’s “Weaponization Working Group” being run by Martin. Wise was literally
mid-trial over his actions on Jan. 6, which included telling law enforcement
they were the Gestapo and screaming “Kill ‘em! Kill ‘em!” as the rioters
attacked police. These are definitely people who are ready to hand their fellow
insurrectionists some cash.

And it’s really just cash they want. Why shouldn’t everyone get the $5
million payout that Ashli Babbitt’s family got for her insurrection efforts?

It’s unclear who exactly would get these reparations. The rioter who is now
serving life in prison for plotting to assassinate federal agents in a separate
case? Even the administration has said that is a bridge too far, and the pardon
that Edward Kelley received doesn’t cover his plot to murder FBI agents.
However, in other instances, the administration has been happy to argue that
Trump’s pardon included separate criminal conduct—an argument that seemed
absurd when the rioters made it, but here we are.

To be fair, this isn’t the only group that conservatives want to give
reparations to. Ghoul-in-chief Stephen Miller wants immigrants to pay
reparations because they made schools bad, and “we need hundreds of
translators,” and “nobody’s learning how to read or write.” Of course,
immigrants already pay taxes to support those school systems, even if they are
undocumented, but it’s not like Miller cares about that.

The demand for rioter reparations is a perfect encapsulation of Trump’s
America. Those who have actually suffered at the hands of the federal
government deserve nothing, but those who attacked the government should be
rewarded. And apparently, no reward will ever be big enough.



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