Criminal law, Politics

Trump Tweets Attack On Gugino As Possible “ANTIFA Provocateur”

Screen Shot 2020-06-09 at 1.00.06 PMPresident Donald Trump tweeted another inflammatory and reckless tweet in suggesting that man injured in the controversial Buffalo police abuse case, Martin Gugino, 75, might be an “Antifa provocateur.”  I previously discussed the case from a legal standpoint on the difficulty of proving assault in the second degree.  However, it is highly inappropriate for a president to be spreading such claims on a case pending trial and without confirmation.  We have discussed the loosely defined groups associated with Antifa but I have not seen proof that Gugino is one of those groups.  The tweet is particularly distasteful given that Gugino remains in critical condition.

Trump was repeatedly an allegation first posted on One America News Network, a conservative site that he clearly favors. He tweeted

“Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur. 75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?”

First, the defense will likely claim that the fall was harder than the push, as we discussed. However, there is no question of the very serious injury to Gugino, who was bleeding from the head after the fall.

Second, even if Gugino was a part of the anti-fascism or the anarchist movements, he was not acting violently. He may have disobeyed an order but this conduct would not warrant such an injury. This does not mean that the officers were criminally responsible, but the attack on Gugino is unwarranted.

As Attorney General Bill Barr has stated, they suspect not only Antifa involvement but also other anarchist and even right-wing groups.  Antifa was not mentioned in the first 22 criminal cases.

421 thoughts on “Trump Tweets Attack On Gugino As Possible “ANTIFA Provocateur””

  1. The theory about the Buffalo protestor is not as crazy as it sounds but most people wont hear about it if the biased media ignores it.

    He has been arrested 300 times for protesting, 82 times for incitement. Even the black mayor said the guy was a known agitator so the police likely knew he wasnt simply a kindly old man

    his facebook and twitter pages have been scrubbed but screenshots show posts like Fu&% the police.

    He was violating curfew and stepped up to the police despite orders to clear the area

    He reached out to touch the officers and video shows him waving his phone at them (rumor is that he was trying to block or access scanner frequencies) but regardless, he made a motion at the police and the policeman pushed him away

    Look at the video after he fell – legs crossed perfectly prone on his back and still holding his phone

    He walked on his own to the ambulance and pictures show him talking on the phone- not exactly critical condition

    At 75, he had no business at a protest given his risk of death from Covid-19

    https://theconservativetree…

    https://nypost.com/2020/06/…

  3. “Know The Signs: How to tell if your grandparent has become an antifa agent”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/10/know-signs-how-tell-if-your-grandparent-has-become-an-antifa-agent/

    For your birthday, she knits you an unwanted scarf. To be used as a balaclava?

    She belongs to a decentralized group with no leadership structure that claims to be discussing a “book,” but no one ever reads the book and all they seem to do is drink wine.

    Is always talking on the phone with an “aunt” you have never actually met in person. Aunt TIFA????

    Always walking into rooms and claiming not to know why he walked into the room. Likely.

    He “trips” over and breaks your child’s Lego police station when walking through the living room in the dark.

    Total and bewildering lack of nostalgia for good old days.

    Gathers with loose-knit, disorderly group of figures you have never met to play “mah-jongg,” governed by mysterious “rule cards” issued annually from a nebulous central authority.

    Suddenly, for no reason, will appear or pretend to be asleep.

    Insists on producing container of nuts whenever there is company. Why? Code of some kind?

    Carries peppermints (chemical irritant?) in purse at all times.

    Is taking Centrum Silver. But for what reason? Surely to build up strength for the coming confrontation.

    Keeps forwarding you what appear on the surface to be emails of jokes someone has typed out from a Reader’s Digest; claims to think you would “enjoy”; must be some sort of recruitment or propaganda or hidden message.

    Hired a clown for your child’s birthday — part of the Juggalo command structure?

    Big tin of Christmas popcorn mysteriously replenishes itself. WHO IS HELPING?!

    You gave her a Precious Moments figurine of a law enforcement officer, but she hasn’t displayed it.

    Remembers things from the past in incredible, exhausting detail, but recent ones only sporadically? Cover of some kind.

    She claims not to know how to use her phone, yet always appears upside-down on FaceTime, which should be impossible without hacking capabilities.

    If he is to be believed, he spends hours playing bridge.

    He is walking non-threateningly at a public protest. — Alexandra Petri

  5. Jonathan: You are correct that its is “inflammatory” for Trump to suggest that Martin Gugino is an “ANTIFA provocateur”. Trump also suggested that Gugino was at the march in Buffalo trying to “set up” the police. None of this is true but authoritarian types, like Trump, often resort to unfounded claims and conspiracy theories to try to discredit legitimate dissent. This tactic was used often by governors in the South during the civil rights movements to try to discredit peaceful protest as the work of “outside agitators”. But Trump is not the only one doing this. AG William Barr also weighed claiming, without any evidence, that there was “foreign influence” in the nationwide protests over the killing of George Floyd. It is clear both Trump and Barr want to discredit the protest movement in order to justify police violence and other misconduct.

    And even you continue a form of guilt by insinuation or association by saying that “even if Gugino was part of an anti-fascism or anarchist movements,…” There is no evidence linking Gugino to any of these movements. He is a self-described peace activist with the Catholic Worker movement protesting against racial injustice and police brutality. His commitment to social justice led him to Buffalo where he was brutally shoved to the ground and severely injured by police. Even though you agree that Gugino’s “conduct would not warrant such an injury” you nevertheless say it “does not mean the officers were criminally responsible”. No doubt this is because police often feel they can beat up peaceful protesters and be protected by the doctrine “limited immunity”. And this is why city councils around the country are considering removing this immunity to hold police officers accountable when they violate the oath they take to “protect and serve”.

    1. Peaceful protests are just fine. I support them.

      When the PP’s are taken over by violent fascist & nazi like black & brown shirt militants fomenting insurrection against the USA & her peace loving citizens, that’s a whole ‘nuther scenario.

      Democrat Margaret Sanger’s Planned ‘Parenthood’ clinics were mostly near black & some other minority neighborhoods. Why don’t the millions of ‘black lives’ taken by abortion matter? Why don’t blacks killed by rioters matter? How about all the black on black killings in Chicago & other dimm run cities? Why don’t they matter?

      How about all the black lives affected by the rioters who burned black businesses. When will those lives matter?

      Most murders of blacks are by other blacks. Isn’t it time that ALL black lives matter & not just those with the ‘correct’ PC politics?

      YES, it is time!

      SamFox

    1. Let’s actually understand what Milley’s words were. I think this quote tells us what he was thinking.

      “created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”

      I disagree with Milley but I can understand the multiplicity of feelings on this event. To be honest, IMO armed insurrection is something to be taken seriously. There is now an area in Seattle that has been taken over by people with guns where the police are not permitted to enter. Civilians including women and children are living there and the end product could be a lot of dead people. The way one stops insurrection is not to let it start which is what the various Democrat Mayors and Governors did. Showing strength and the general is part of the way to stop such insurrection. If I were President I would fire Milley at the appropriate time as the President is the Commander and Chief. The general’s appology was actually the military’s entrance into politics.

      1. The Lafayatte Park protesters did not include armed or violent members and was no insurrection.

        1. Anon – they rioters at Lafayette Park were throwing frozen water bottles and other objects at the Park Police. They were warned 3 times by loudspeaker to move back to the designated area. Only then did the Park Police start moving and using pepper rounds.

            1. Sam, I guess that means the MSM was lying to the public as usual and people like Anon are sucking it up.

        2. You don’t have the slightest idea whether there were threats or not. The newmedia has already been proven wrong on loads of issues involving what is happening. I think the action was taken by the police having nothing to do with Trump. This type of behavior was threatened and videoed secretly in mid January by PV. In fact since I am mentioning this I will post their newest video on line.

      2. Allan, here is the oath those Traitorous American Hating Generals/other Aholes swore to that they have now broken:

        Kryteon oic • 6 hours ago

        “I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

        https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/06/never-gen-mark-milley-stands-mob-apologizes-walking-torched-st-johns-church-president-trump-video/

  7. William Barr has three brothers. Together, they were referred to as “the bully Barrs.” (Vanity Fair)

    “TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2020

    The Young Bill Barr

    In case you didn’t already know there was something rotten about Attorney General William Barr, who’s working behind the scenes to undermine what we have of the rule of law in the Department of Justice… Here’s an op-ed written in 1991 when he was up for Senate confirmation under Bush 41.

    As far as I can tell, this may be the only transcription of it online:

    What William Barr Isn’t Telling His Questioners

    By Jimmy Lohman
    Florida Flambeau, Nov. 18, 1991”

    http://daughternumberthree.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-young-bill-barr.html

  8. “Bully Barr should be reviled, not given award”

    “(Updated Saturday, June 6 with award status)”

    https://www.escondidograpevine.com/2020/06/04/bully-barr-should-be-reviled-not-given-award/

    Excerpt:

    Barr’s professional misconduct aside, yet another reason he should never have been designated distinguished alumnus dates back to his time as a Horace Mann student. While not precisely echoing Aristotle who said, “Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man,” Barr’s conduct as a young student at Horace Mann is further cause for his disqualification from any distinguished designation.

    Jimmy Lohman, now a death penalty attorney at Austin, Texas, attended school with Barr. When Barr last scammed an AG appointment, Lohman spoke up about his experiences being bullied by Barr at HM.

    Lohman wrote an article for the Florida State University newspaper while a civil rights and criminal defense attorney at Tallahassee in November 1991. That article detailed Barr’s extensive bullying, and abusive, behavior at HM and thn Columbia University. For an online view of Lohman’s story, visit Twitter here.

    …

    genevieve
    @genvc

    Barr is also a well-known school yard bully. Jimmy Lohman, #ATX based death penalty attorney, wrote about his encounters with the young Billy Barr after Bush nominated him in the 90s. #WilliamBarr

    “Billy was my very own high school tormentor,” Lohman said of their time together from 1963 to 1967. “He was a classic bully. I met Billy when I was in seventh grade. Billy was a porky ninth grader who had a vicious fixation on my little Jewish ‘commie’ ass. Billy and another ugly mean porker friend of his lived to make me miserable.”

    Lohman went on to address, in great detail, Barr’s bullying and abhorrent behavior while at Horace Mann and subsequently when the two attended Columbia University at the same time.

    “Barr was a sick and sadistic kid,” Lohman said in 1991. “He’s come a long way from terrorizing seventh graders just because they wore racial equality buttons. Now he gets in front of cameras and says things like ‘I am committed to the aggressive protection of civil rights and a Justice Department under my leadership will not tolerate discrimination.’..while (former Reagan AG, who resigned in disgrace, Ed) Meese was ordering California cops to bust heads at Berkeley, Barr was busting ’em alongside the cops at Columbia. It’s just the same old sour wine in a newer bottle.”

    — Escondido Grapevine

    1. Milbank:

      ‘The 1991 description of 1963 Barr’s harassment sounds eerily like the 2020 Barr. He “lived to make me miserable,” with a “vicious fixation on my little Jewish ‘commie’ ass,” Lohman alleged, because he wore peace and racial-equality pins. He said the four Barr brothers picketed the school’s “Junior Carnival” because proceeds went to the NAACP, and he alleged that Billy Barr, the “most fanatic rightist” of the four, later “teamed with the New York City riot police to attack anti-war protesters and ‘long hairs.’ ”’

      1. The comment at 12:09 pm is an excerpt from Dana Milbank’s column in the Washington Post.

      2. I have seen Milbank frame the issues personally where by making things up and omitting other things he is able to produce a viewpoint against other individuals completely opposite of the viewpoint one would have if all the facts were included.

        Fact Check: Because of Milbank’s inability to see things from an unbiased viewpoint he is a political hack though he will let you know how unbiased he is.

  9. “As Attorney General Bill Barr has stated, they suspect not only Antifa involvement but also other anarchist and even right-wing groups.” — Jonathan Turley

    Jonathan Turley once sang Michael Avenatti’s praises and he often (sometimes?) describes Bill Barr as his “friend of many years.” (I believe that’s a direct quote.)

    The following article was written by a guy — now an attorney, too — who knew Barr back in high school:

    https://twitter.com/AndrewFeinberg/status/1229222393425616896/photo/1

    https://twitter.com/JamesCLohman1/status/1233188402016739328

      1. “So this is why Bill Barr is such a bully”

        by Dana Milbank, Washington Post

        June 9, 2020 at 5:27 p.m. CDT

        Excerpt:

        Police in Buffalo shove a 75-year-old man to the ground and blood pours from his ear. Police in Brooklyn knock down a young woman and call her a “bitch” because she asked why she had to leave the street. Federal authorities in Washington fire tear gas at peaceful demonstrators, then lie about it.

        Get the feeling law enforcement in this country is being run by a middle-school bully?

        If so, you are not wrong.

        Childhood bullies have a predisposition to become adult bullies, research shows, and, sure enough, it seems Attorney General William Barr was a teenage bully more than 50 years ago.

        Back in 1991, during Barr’s confirmation to be George H.W. Bush’s attorney general, lawyer Jimmy Lohman, who overlapped with Barr at New York’s Horace Mann School and later Columbia University, wrote a piece for the little-known Florida Flambeau newspaper about Barr being “my very own high-school tormentor” — a “classic bully” and “power abuser” in the 1960s who “put the crunch on me every chance [he] got.”

        Nobody noticed the Flambeau piece at the time, but Lohman posted it on Facebook when President Trump nominated Barr in 2018, and it took on “a life of its own,” Lohman told me Tuesday from Austin, where Post researcher Alice Crites tracked him down. The article resurfaces in social media each time Barr does something unconscionable — which is often.

        The 1991 description of 1963 Barr’s harassment sounds eerily like the 2020 Barr. He “lived to make me miserable,” with a “vicious fixation on my little Jewish ‘commie’ ass,” Lohman alleged, because he wore peace and racial-equality pins. He said the four Barr brothers picketed the school’s “Junior Carnival” because proceeds went to the NAACP, and he alleged that Billy Barr, the “most fanatic rightist” of the four, later “teamed with the New York City riot police to attack anti-war protesters and ‘long hairs.’ ”

        The 1991 article says Barr, a “sadistic kid,” has “come a long way from terrorizing seventh graders just because they wore racial equality buttons.” The Justice Department didn’t respond to my request for comment.

        — Dana Milbank

      2. An excerpt from Dana Milbank’s column:

        “So this is why Bill Barr is such a bully”

        June 9, 2020 at 5:27 p.m. CDT

        Police in Buffalo shove a 75-year-old man to the ground and blood pours from his ear. Police in Brooklyn knock down a young woman and call her a “bitch” because she asked why she had to leave the street. Federal authorities in Washington fire tear gas at peaceful demonstrators, then lie about it.

        Get the feeling law enforcement in this country is being run by a middle-school bully?

        If so, you are not wrong.

        Childhood bullies have a predisposition to become adult bullies, research shows, and, sure enough, it seems Attorney General William Barr was a teenage bully more than 50 years ago.

        Back in 1991, during Barr’s confirmation to be George H.W. Bush’s attorney general, lawyer Jimmy Lohman, who overlapped with Barr at New York’s Horace Mann School and later Columbia University, wrote a piece for the little-known Florida Flambeau newspaper about Barr being “my very own high-school tormentor” — a “classic bully” and “power abuser” in the 1960s who “put the crunch on me every chance [he] got.”

        Nobody noticed the Flambeau piece at the time, but Lohman posted it on Facebook when President Trump nominated Barr in 2018, and it took on “a life of its own,” Lohman told me Tuesday from Austin, where Post researcher Alice Crites tracked him down. The article resurfaces in social media each time Barr does something unconscionable — which is often.

        The 1991 description of 1963 Barr’s harassment sounds eerily like the 2020 Barr. He “lived to make me miserable,” with a “vicious fixation on my little Jewish ‘commie’ ass,” Lohman alleged, because he wore peace and racial-equality pins. He said the four Barr brothers picketed the school’s “Junior Carnival” because proceeds went to the NAACP, and he alleged that Billy Barr, the “most fanatic rightist” of the four, later “teamed with the New York City riot police to attack anti-war protesters and ‘long hairs.’ ”

        The 1991 article says Barr, a “sadistic kid,” has “come a long way from terrorizing seventh graders just because they wore racial equality buttons.” The Justice Department didn’t respond to my request for comment.

        — Dana Milbank

            1. Mespo, when those suckling babies get into trouble they are the first to call the police while they throw their temper tantrums and cry. If the police aren’t there guess who they will call to protect them? You!

          2. As we all now realize a paywall to anonymous is totally meaningless. He doesn’t read beyond the headlines.

        2. Bill Barr peacefully shook his head and walked away. That is when Milbank peed in his pants.

      4. So I guess you people missed the article highlighting all the media like Wapo, NYT, etc that are now & have been on the Chicom payroll, from earlier this week.

        1. I didnt. but i been saying this for years now that the Chicoms have been buying off the American mass media, Silicon Valley, and Hollwood

          https://zeenews.india.com/world/china-daily-paid-us-newspapers-19-million-for-advertising-printing-report-2289019.html

          19 million is a petty sum, in truth, the scale of the aquisitions of media assets from actual studios, to quislings among journalists, has cost them billions. but, they got plenty more to spend

          Chicoms via their guanxi, networks, are accumulating land in Canada, California, New York, and other places at a breakneck pace the past decade. how all the money comes out, past their capital controls? via Hong Kong.

          This is why it’s important to cut the water off, now or never. That move was underway right when the rioting broke.

          Trump moved to do this, which is why the mass media is going for broke to unhorse him, even before the election

          BECAUSE THE CHICOM MASTERS TELL THEM TO DO SO– STAT!
          before “Trumpu” pulls the plug on the money laundering mechanisms by which the Chicoms have sneaked their corrupt billions out of the country, past their own capital controls.

          Ha ha, did you think that the Chicom leaders follow their own laws? Of course not.
          But neither are they as corrupt as they seem; actually them infiltrating the US and Canada with big money is a strategy they are executing both openly, and covertly; both according to legal means of their own nation, and even breaking the laws of their own nation. the goal is simple, however complicated the means: buy off greedy Americans and gain control of American technological and media assets. Very smart they are! I admire their cunning and their cohesion. Even though it comes at the expense of my nation as a whole, and they are adversaries, at least they are not traitors to their own kind.

          Who are the traitors? Think about that. I do not say,

          But the naive fools who are leadership levels in the Democratic party and Sillcon Valley and the mass media think that they can use the Chicoms and cast them aside if they like once they are in power; well, guys, don’t be so sure about that. but if you succeed, you’re going to find out, that’s for sure

    2. Anonymous:
      And we all know that recollections from 40-odd years ago are crystal clear and nobody, but nobody, ever changes their attitudes from high school. What a load of leftists tripe. Are the Left born gullible fools or do their parents train them?

      1. “40-odd years ago” — mesblo

        Actually it was 20 years…, but I understand that you’re challenged.

        Barr is certainly an unappealing and unattractive man, in addition to his propensity for bullying. The two of you would seem to have some things in common.

        1. “The 1991 description of 1963 Barr’s harassment …”
          *********************
          1991 – 1963 = 28 years
          2020 – 1963 = 57 years

          Yeah, 28 years is way more clear than 40-something. You do like nitpicking.

          1. Lohman:

            “I admit it: I have a personal ax to grind with Billy Barr, who is poised to be the next attorney general of the United States. I had the misfortune of knowing the AG dude pretty well (a lot better than I wanted to) in junior high, high school and college.

            “Billy was my very own high school tormentor. He was a classic bully. I met Billy when I was in seventh grade. Billy was a porky ninth grader who had a vicious fixation on my little Jewish “commie” ass. Billy and another ugly mean porker friend of his lived to make me miserable. Combined, they weighed a good three times what I weighed and they put the crunch on me every chance they got. I would give anything to meet Bar “behind the gym” right now.

            “There was something about that used to set Barr and his hideous sidekick off. I know the peace and civil rights buttons I wore drove these guys whacko. It was from 1963 to 1967 that I dodged these creeps: years of major polarization in this country.”

            Again:

            “It was from 1963 to 1967 that I dodged these creeps: years of major polarization in this country.”

            So it was 24 years. 24 is a far cry from 40, but mespo calls this “nitpicking.” Some would call it “accuracy.”

  10. Seth posts a large portion of an entire article which is an attack, plain and simple.
    It’s not moral high ground, it’s low life trailer park barking insults.

    If any of the libtards decide Trump or any Trumper needs to clean it up, they can expect it just as soon as they stop insulting everyone they oppose every time they open their yappers. In other words, it’s never going to happen. I will point out the next post I happen to see from the disloyal anti_American criminal opposition that isn’t an insult.

    Expect that in the year 2025.

    1. Shakdi / Estovir:

      Here you presume that Trump is a revered institution no ‘Real American’ questions. You can’t explain, however, why Trump keeps tweeting crazy things. Like we’re ‘not’ supposed to notice.

      It’s not polite to observe that Trump is disconnected from reality. We must pretend Trump is mature, experienced and wise. When he is, in fact, ‘none’ of those things.

      But the gig is up. Trump has flunked every test of leadership this unusual year. There’s no pretending anymore that Trump is anything but a fool.

      So drop your stupid nonsense about ‘anti-American criminal opposition’. It just sounds ridiculous.

      1. Peter – have you noticed the crazy s**t the media has been broadcasting and tweeting about the POTUS? The Donald always hits back. He is not some pansy who is going to take a knee to BLM for points.

        1. Paul, you’re a Director of Theatre. Big men look reverent kneeling on one knee. From a visual standpoint it looks just as respectful as hand on the heart. So if Black players want to do that every Sunday, it should hardly matter. Young boys watching at home will still think their heroes are kneeling in respect.

          1. From a visual standpoint many think it would look respectful if black/mex/white/asians/gray off world aliens would all pose for a picture taking a knee on the washed up quarter back Colin Peckhead’s neck.

            Enough with Hollyweird’s American Hating, Pro Pedo Crap & their Chicom flu & rioting, etc….

            1. @Oky1

              One thing I do know is that many of the pro-Trump disciples — yeah, like religious “disciples”, that degree of devotion — commenting here on this blog have long been practicing what might be called a “double knee” — that is, figuratively down on their presidential kneepads in front of Trump, mouths open and ready to receive whatever he may deliver to them.

        2. Paint chips, I am not as nice as Paul so I will fill in what he left out. “He is not some pansy ||Like you are with your shoes and nails || who is going to take a knee to BLM for points.” Trump is who he is and those that like him accept him the way he is because he is doing good things and underneath everything he is a fine human being. You on the other hand create a completely different image that you don’t like but why would anyone not use that type of image when you lie about Trump and this supporters in the way you do.

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