We’ve seen plenty of January 6 “Insurrectionists” arrested and convicted of illegal parading, but those folks actually entered the Capitol building. The FBI just arrested a Republican candidate running for governor in Michigan for not entering the Capitol or participating in the riot. Presumably he is being charged will illegally refusing to illegally parade.
Ryan Kelly is one of 5 Republicans running to displace hideous shrew Gretchen Whitmer for Michigan governor. His promising campaign however has hit a slight snag as The Hill reports:
The FBI arrested Michigan GOP gubernatorial candidate Ryan Kelley on Thursday in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot and searched his Allendale home.
Kelley was allegedly seen outside the Capitol on Jan. 6 and faces four misdemeanor charges stemming from the riot. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C. confirmed his arrest and said Kelley is set to appear in court later on Thursday.
He was allegedly seen outside the Capitol? Since when is that a crime?
As it turns out, the FBI’s case against Kelly is even weaker than that:
The FBI found no evidence that Kelley had entered the Capitol building but alleged he was among the crowd on Capitol grounds for roughly two hours.
Apparently there is a time limit for how long a person is allowed to be in a public space.
The FBI alleged Kelley was part of crowd that was attacking and pushing past Capitol Police officers as Congress was in the process of certifying the 2020 election results. At times, he allegedly filmed crowds attacking the officers.
Reading this carefully, Kelly did not participate in attacking the officers, he just filmed it, which is another mystery crime.
The agency’s investigators also said Kelley consistently waved his hand to instruct the crowd to move closer to the building, climbing scaffolding set up for President Biden’s inauguration. At one point, Kelley allegedly pulled a covering off a temporary structure, according to the documents.
There you go. He was participating in illegal hand-waving and unlawful covering removal. Now it all makes sense.
It actually doesn’t and neither does this:
He is charged with knowingly entering a restricted area without lawful authority, disorderly conduct, knowingly engaging in physical violence in a restricted area and willfully injuring or committing depredation against federal government property.
In the FBI’s own charging document they admit that he didn’t enter a restricted area, didn’t riot, didn’t assault officers and didn’t injure anyone. So what’s with all these charges?
Granted, he did remove a covering from a temporary structure but what the hell does that even mean? Did yank a tarp off of something? What’s the monetary damages for having to put a tarp back up?
“Depredation” is the act of looting or plundering so the FBI is saying that Kelly stole something of value to enrich himself. Their charging documents however only allege that he removed a covering, so even this is bullshit.
Making this the most ridiculous thing ever is the fact that the FBI says they were aware, “of Kelley’s presence at the Capitol in the days following the riot.” It’s been almost a year and half since then and they are just now arresting him?
Since the feds haven’t had much success in charging and prosecuting anyone for insurrection or murder following the “deadly insurrection” of January 6, they’ve been throwing grandmas in jail for illegal parading. Now that they’ve run out of those bogus claims, they’re arresting people for observing illegal parading from afar.
