It’s Only A Matter Of Time

Posted on by under Election 2020, guns, Law and justice, Political commentary, Social commentary

This, from a press release by the Department of Justice, U.S. District Attorney’s Office, Northern District of California, yesterday, July 16th …

According to court documents, Ian Benjamin Rogers, 45, of Napa, and Jarrod Copeland, 37, of Vallejo, began planning to attack targets they associated with Democrats after the 2020 Presidential election and sought support from an anti-government militia group. According to the indictment, the defendants planned to use incendiary devices to attack their targets and hoped their attacks would prompt a movement.

The indictment describes how Copeland and Rogers used multiple messaging applications and discussed the attacks on numerous occasions. For example, in late December 2020, Copeland told Rogers he contacted an anti-government militia group to gather support for the movement and in January 2021, Rogers told Copeland “I want to blow up a democrat building bad.” Copeland agreed, saying, “I agree” “Plan attack”.  The agreed to start with the Democratic Headquarters in Sacramento and to “see what happens.”  In one exchange, Rogers wrote to Copeland, “after the 20th we go to war,” meaning that they would initiate acts of violence after the inauguration on January 20, 2021.

According to court documents, on January 15, just four days after that exchange and five days before the trigger that Rogers and Copeland identified as the start of their campaign of violence, law enforcement officers searched Rogers’s home and business and seized a cache of weapons from Rogers’s home, including 45 to 50 firearms, thousands of rounds of ammunition, and five pipe bombs. Copeland allegedly also attempted to destroy evidence of the plan; after Rogers’s arrest, Copeland communicated with a leader of a militia group who advised Copeland to switch to a new communications platform and delete everything he had. Copeland agreed and when law enforcement obtained Copeland’s devices on January 17, Copeland’s communications with Rogers were missing.

Additional documents filed by the government argue that the defendants understood they would be viewed as domestic terrorists and hoped that their violent acts might start a movement to overthrow the government. In November of 2020, Rogers allegedly used encrypted messaging applications to tell Copeland that he would “hit the enemy in the mouth” by using Molotov cocktails and gasoline to attack targets associated with democrats, including the Governor’s Mansion and the Democratic Headquarters Building in Sacramento.

Rogers and Copeland are both charged with conspiracy to destroy by fire or explosive a building used or in affecting interstate commerce.

Rogers & Copeland

Prosecutors, national security officials and politicians have warned that after Trump and his allies ramped up his lies of a stolen election in November and after a mob of hundreds of Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol on January 6, their inflammatory rhetoric could lead to violence.  Gee, you really think???

I have questions …

  • How in the hell did Ian Benjamin Rogers acquire “40-50 firearms, thousands of rounds of ammunition, and five pipe bombs”??? Would you not expect that background checks would have red-flagged this somewhere along the line?  Oh wait … I forgot … you can buy a gun without a background check … apparently you can buy LOTS of guns without a background check.
  • How many more similar plots are out there that the federal authorities aren’t aware of? You know and I know that this was not the sole plan among Trump-supporting lunatics.  You’ll remember that Trump appealed to his supporters and told them to “… fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”  These two got caught … how long until one doesn’t get caught in time?  It’s only a matter of time …
  • WHY isn’t the former guy in jail for inciting to riot with his words? Trust me, if I said the things that the former guy has said, my ass (and the rest of me) would be sitting in a jail cell awaiting trial for inciting violence at the very least.  Is he somehow … more special than you or I?

I sincerely hope that Rogers and Copeland spend the next 20 years, the maximum possible sentence for their crimes, in prison, but the odds are against it.  And one last question … if they had succeeded in their plot, would they be getting a fist bump from the likes of Josh Hawley, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz and Margie Greene, and would they get an “Atta Boy” from the former guy and his cronies?  Think on that one when you go to bed tonight.

17 thoughts on “It’s Only A Matter Of Time”

  1. I wonder whether these two would have been happy to stop at bombing a building or whether the rage Trump pushed them too would have meant that the building needed to be occupied. The fact that Rogers had so many guns , so much ammunition and some pipe bombs does seem to lead to the thought of there being killings involved, unless of course he just really liked target practice. No mention as to whether Copeland had an arsenal too or whether in the time available he was able to dispose of it.
    I hope that no-one tries to regard these as martyrs because they were caught and I hope they’ll be put away for a long time. But the one big thing I’d like to see come out of this is to disallow politicians from using such inflamed rhetoric as ‘The Big Lie’, instead using official channels to raise questions as to legality and allowing for official investigations to determine the truth. What Trump did was to purposely engineer the effect of Jan 6th and use his position to spread indiscriminate lies about another politician (or anyone) wthout recourse to the law because of the loose Freedom of Speech laws there.
    Well done to the law enforcement officers and the DoJ for stopping these two in time.
    Cwtch

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    • No, from other accounts I’ve read, they also hoped to blow up the Governor’s mansion, and from there who knows what, but if they had succeeded and gotten away with it, there is no doubt in my mind that they would have gone on to “bigger and better” things. From what I gathered, Copeland was … more or less along for the ride and didn’t have an arsenal, though I know we don’t have all of the facts yet.

      I agree … I hope nobody puts these jackasses on a pedestal and tries to make a martyr of them, and I hope some hotshot attorneys don’t get them off with only a slap on the wrist. They need to be made an example for any who might have similar notions in their minds. Sadly, I doubt that this will serve to teach the politicians a lesson about watching their language. If January 6th didn’t teach them a lesson, then nothing will. Yes, well done to the FBI and DOJ for catching these guys before they could act, but … how many more are there that are flying under the radar? That’s the really scary part. Sigh.

      Cwtch

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    • He absolutely is! There’s a reason they call him “Teflon Don”, for nothing … NOTHING seems to stick to him! His crimes are numerous and documented, but still he struts around as if he owns the world. Sigh.

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    • You’re right … and the members of those extreme groups are narrow-minded … single-minded as a rule, concerned only with what THEY want, not with the greater good. Back in the day, say a few years ago, in the pre-Trump era, I thought we could come together, resolve our problems, learn to compromise on our differences. But today … it seems the gulf between right and left has become so wide that I’m not sure it can ever be bridged. Sigh.

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    • It DOES seem that way, and that’s a scary thing if you live here. I can look up and down my street and realize that I have no idea how many guns might be in each of those houses. We had an incident a few weeks ago that a woman went berserk and climbed into the trash dumpster at the end of the street naked, save for her gun! Luckily that one was de-escalated, but you remember … I think it was in January, when we had a hostage situation and finally a man shot to death just two houses down from us. It’s frightening. xx

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