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 havenāt been in the news, another example of the value of context keeping with Maltego. If you donāt care and/or donāt 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 isnāt directly implicated in any way (yet), but thereās an insider trading case against Digital World Acquisition, a āSPACā formed to raise money in order to purchase TMTG. Among the accused are Anton Postolnikov, nephew of one of Putinās 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 - thereās $300 million tied up in this thing and itās not going anywhere until the investigation is over.
Itās not clear to me if any of this would be at risk from E. Jean Carrollās $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 heās linked to articles about this, but I never confirmed, so he doesnāt have a āCHS6ā 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 didnāt already have. I think this is because while they were assault participants, theyāre 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 stateās 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. Itās 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 weāre now into the next presidential election cycle. This looks, to me, like endemic corruption to the point the system either canāt or wonāt deal with the problem.
As I said yesterday in Weāre Gonna Fight ā¦ 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 weāre 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.