How Petty and Self-Defeating Can You Get?
Editorial credit: Lev Radin / Shutterstock.com
By now, you may have heard of the latest Orwellian move by the Department of Justice. Two federal prosecutors have been put on administrative leave for the great sin of mentioning in a sentencing memo a defendant’s participation in the January 6 insurrection attempt.
It’s Orwell mixed with Macbeth, really, because it encompasses the paranoia and descent into post-crime madness of the Thane of Cawdor.
Let’s start with the defendant in question, Taylor Taranto, and his series of violent and pernicious crimes, apart from his participation in January 6, where he breached the Capitol building. After returning home to Washington state, he spread conspiracy theories about the attack. In 2023, Taranto staged a hoax by live-streaming that he had outfitted his car with a detonator and he was going to blow it up at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
The next day, he drove to a residential neighborhood in Washington, D.C., while live-streaming himself making threats, including suggesting he would detonate a car bomb. Around the same time, Trump published the purported address of Barack Obama on his social media platform (we should pause a moment to try to take that in—as a presidential candidate, Trump published for his MAGA hordes a former President’s address), and Taranto read and reposted it. He then drove through Obama’s neighborhood, live-streaming that he was searching for tunnels that would let him get to the former President. The Secret Service showed up and he fled, leaving behind a van full of illegal weapons: a CZ Scorpion, a pistol, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
https://harrylitman.substack.com/p/how-petty-and-self-defeating-can