Today was only the second or third time this year I had cause to open the MAGA Meltdown Maltego graph and it got updated not once but twice. The first case involved some very big fish close to Trump and the second involved some irrationally optimistic foot soldiers from January 6th who thought going to trial was going to work out for them.
Attention Conservation Notice:
This contains a little movement in areas of MAGA world that haven’t been in the news, another example of the value of context keeping with Maltego. If you don’t care and/or don’t need to do that for your own stuff, feel free to move on.
Trump Media & Technology Group:
First, the parent company of Truth.Social, the Trump Media & Technology Group, is again in the news with shady dealings.
This time Trump isn’t directly implicated in any way (yet), but there’s an insider trading case against Digital World Acquisition, a “SPAC” formed to raise money in order to purchase TMTG. Among the accused are Anton Postolnikov, nephew of one of Putin’s longtime staffers, and a Ukrainian emigree named Michael Shvartsman. Patrick Orlando rounds out the list of folks in the hot seat and the takeaway for Trump is this - there’s $300 million tied up in this thing and it’s not going anywhere until the investigation is over.
It’s not clear to me if any of this would be at risk from E. Jean Carroll’s $83 million judgment against Trump or the imminent disgorgement order in the New York civil trial, where a figure of $250 million has been heard repeatedly.
Initial AFO:
I had though the Initial Assault of Federal Officers case was resolved, but that was only for Proud Boys ringleader Joe Biggs. There was some speculation from emptywheel that Ryan Samsel had a plea deal, so he’s linked to articles about this, but I never confirmed, so he doesn’t have a “CHS6” appended to his name.
5 Capitol riot defendants who led "first breach" on Jan. 6 found guilty at trial came as a tiny surprise to me, in particular that there were three names I didn’t already have. I think this is because while they were assault participants, they’re not Proud Boys.
There are 3,320 individual names on that graph. Twenty five are known to have cooperated with law enforcement to some degree, some in a bid for leniency, some for other motivations.
Plea deals are an important tool for prosecutors attempting to dismantle a criminal network. Eight individuals involved in the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers have turned state’s evidence on their fellow travelers. Every associate of theirs who ducked charges by not attending is still going to spend the rest of their lives on a watch list.
Conclusion:
Quiet conversations are happening on this stuff and the overall tone is NOT positive. It’s been three years and the prosecution has only really done its job on the foot soldiers. The organizers have avoided consequences for so long that we’re now into the next presidential election cycle. This looks, to me, like endemic corruption to the point the system either can’t or won’t deal with the problem.
As I said yesterday in We’re Gonna Fight … we ARE gonna fight. The upcoming election is about whether we cling to the rule of law, or permit the grifter/theocrat wing of the Republican party to set the course. Either way we’re going to have simmering insurgency, with the best course being that it slowly dies out as its adherents age, while the U.S. adapts to the collapse of China by learning to see Mexico as the workshop of our world.
We could just as easily make the wrong choice here, treat Mexico and the rest of the western hemisphere as the enemy, which will delight Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.