I think we are all learning that you can't trust anything breaking on the internet. There is always more to the story. If the internet reports say your mother loves you, check it out!
Yes, it's always a good idea to wait a while, to see how the initial narrative might end up changing quite a bit. This is true not only for local news stories, or stories like this one, but even for "news" about international or foreign events. The initial reports can often turn out to be based on falsehoods, exaggerations, distortions, sometimes intentionally so, in order to provoke a particular response.
Live not by lies? When are you going to start? I don't know much about this Ruffini character. Maybe he is a misguided youth. Ask yourself, if Ruffini were black, latino, queer, Antifa, BLM or transgender, would the FBI have raided his home and arrested his family? No. Why the double standard? Why are conservatives and even extreme right wingers treated much more harshly than Neo Marxist leftists? Do we not have equality under the law? Is Ruffini guilty until proven innocent too? The law needs to be applied equally. That is what we should be fighting for.
Is Rod suggesting the law shouldn't be applied equally? All he is saying is that based on additional information he does not find this a cause he wishes to give money to. What so objectionable about that? It's his judgment to make.
What? You are stuck in a narrative and not looking at facts. Read the affidavit: the kid allegedly made specific threats against places, posted images of himself with the AR-15 that he had at home, and said online that he was going to use it against the synagogue. Is it really morally right to fall back on "they wouldn't have done this to leftists"? I hope they would, given the same set of facts, but even if they didn't, should far-right extremists who make the kinds of threats this AR-15 kid did get a pass?
Second, nobody is "convicting" any Rufini. My point was simply that the Rufini family story, as presented by them on GiveSendGo, was highly misleading. If you still want to donate to them, have at it. I thoughtlessly retweeted that GiveSendGo appeal because the story, as presented by Rufini, triggered my priors. I backed down only after some conservative Catholics who normally would sympathize with a Rufini warned me that there was a lot more to this than Rufini indicated. I could have just quietly deleted my initial tweet, but I felt bad that somebody might have given to their cause because I had brought it to their attention. I needed to own my own mistake.
I'm in favor of your decision to remove your Tweet. I'm also willing to take the serious claims in the warrant at face value and assume the kid was genuinely radicalized online into hatred as well as primed for action. That's terrifying.
At the same time, I'm not willing to assume the FBI was innocent of targeting in this case. What we don't know is who exactly was in those Telegram chat groups; were there FBI agents posing as fellow radicals and soliciting the pictures and suggesting or encouraging the kid's activity, as claimed by the family? We have no idea what the full picture is because we only have the damning parts selected by the FBI for their warrant.
So I'm with you in feeling truly sorry for this family, and in your concern that they showed themselves lacking integrity by leaving out their own share of damning facts in their fund-raising appeal. But I'm not willing to assume the FBI isn't themselves responsible for the kid being radicalized in the first place. They've already proven they do play dirty and they do target conservatives for setups as "domestic terrorists." While I wouldn't donate to this family, that's primarily because I can't tell what the true, whole story is. And I wouldn't want my funds going to anything other than rehabilitation of the boy. I just hope his future hasn't been ruined by this mess.
Having spent some time in "Orthodox" groups on Telegram, I wouldn't be surprised if there were Feds there as well. I am appalled at how much hate shows up in many of those groups. I'm not saying that there aren't plenty of the OrthoBros who wouldn't say some of this stuff, but it's so over the top there sometimes that one wonders if there aren't instigators trying to get people to say stuff that's way past the pale. I mean, I saw at least one conversation where it got so nuts that people stopped participating because they thought the one guy might be a Fed trying to get everybody else.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were feds trying to stir stuff up. We know that they do that. Still, each and every young man who participates in these forums is responsible for his own thoughts, words, and actions. Whether it's a federal agent trolling, or an authentic zealot, it doesn't matter: you are responsible for your own behavior. It doesn't make it okay if the guy goading you to say extremist and violent things is a fed or a bona fide racist/anti-Semite: you, young man, should turn from this evil.
That is absolutely true! One of the things that terrified me the most about God when I was a kid was learning a) He sees everything and b) we're going to be called to account for everything that we do - even to the thoughts we entertain. I know a lot of people have gotten away from talking about God as anything but a kind and loving entity, but seriously, if they actually believe in God, do they think that such awful talk is pleasing to Him? Or do they think that since it's on Telegram, it's hidden away?
I got Telegram in early 2018 because back then, there was an initiative from the Russian Orthodox Church to use the popularity of Telegram (as a Russian app) in Russia to help Orthodox Christians find other Orthodox Christians living near to each other to actually find each other. The thing may have had some official help within Telegram as well; I don't remember anymore. I've been interested in Orthodoxy online since 2002, so even being in the US, and having poor Russian skills, I downloaded it to see if it worked. After the big Twitter crackdowns, a lot of users from the US started using it, assuming that the Russian leadership of Telegram isn't going to be quite as keen to censor people. (Ironic, isn't it?) Some would argue that Telegram and Gab have so much awful content because there's a lot less censorship, and I'm sure part of that is true, but I also wouldn't be surprised if there are people out there churning this stuff out on those platforms for the sake of making the platforms look awful to keep normal people from wanting to be part of them and/or finding people who will follow and participate in horrible discussions or even actions.
Rod was saying he would not opine on whether there was or was not entrapment, correct? (edit: Rod's post came up while I was writing mine to say he would not be surprised there were feds, but the young man was responsible - I wrote this edit in these parenthesis after seeing Rod's post.)
It is interesting. Look at both similarities and differences regarding the Whitmer entrappers. They used extreme methods, had to beg those who kidnapped to do it many, many times, had to provide tools, ideas for methods, etc. Accused perps were out of their mind mix of potheads and, I think I recall, mentally disabled. Nothing close to the kidnapping attempt would have happened with out Feds. Once I learned details (not given here) I felt this was the unusual case where entrapment was indeed a defense.
However - look at the excerpts from two other posters "ABN chat: do it during the service" and "Throw Away: What date are you looking to do the activism". Both are very suspect, the first is goading by who knows who, the second is highly suspect because speaking of doing violence is free speech until a specific date is specified.
So let's say the kid was entrapped. Well, he was not charged, just forced to get mental help, if I read correctly. Maybe they did not want to prosecute an entrapment case? No one knows.
But bottom line - the kid was going to do violence and stated he was. He did not appear to need encouragement to do violence. He did sort of get it regarding time to do it - (do it during service, when will you do it?).
Based on what we can see here, whether or not Feds spoke in the chat room, something should have happened to the kid - legal case or mandatory mental help. Something should have happened to the father who gave him access to guns. So - I believe - entrapment can be a real defense where the defendant should not be convicted. On the other hand, there are times that even though entrapment happened, there should be a conviction.
I agree with your basic arguments here, though it's not clear to me that the father violated the law if he was not found in personal possession of a gun. (Also, I don't know if the mere fact the kid had access violated the law.) I hope no one read my comment above as excusing the boy from his behavior or claiming law enforcement should not have taken action. Regardless who the actors on that chat thread were, he did sound ready to strike and I shudder to think what might have happened if he hadn't been stopped.
But an equally big concern to me is how much legitimate cause we all have these days to question the integrity of LEOs, especially at the federal level. Rod himself is in the position of writing the above essay exactly because his own "priors" were to distrust the justness of the charges after hearing the family was Catholic. What does that say about the state of America? About how badly our justice system is failing?
That's why I'm willing to believe both that the kid was actually radicalized and that federal agents may well have orchestrated that process. While it's a good thing the boy was prevented from carrying out any plans, it is inexcusable that federal law enforcement is so selective about who they investigate, that they will overlook blatant criminal behavior by individuals in some groups, and bend over backwards to go after, even entrap, individuals in other groups. We are more and more becoming a banana republic.
I’m afraid that confessions and admissions are regarded as mere weakness by a growing cohort of morally one-dimensional people of either or any political affiliation.
I ascribe such moral illiteracy and incompetence to the broader general illiteracy and incompetence that we are beginning to see in all arenas of human life as civilization visibly dissolves.
And although it’s tempting to map this decadence onto the left-right divide, I resist that mapping. It’s the logic of the West playing out. The essential feature of every technical advance has been to render entire categories of previous endeavor obsolete. Scientific advance is, economically speaking, an index of capital accumulation—intellectual capital and human capital as well as good old industrial capital that can build particle accelerators and electron scanning microscopes and space probes (and the missile technology that puts them into their trajectories).
We are now looking at our greatest technological achievement so far—universal ignorance and incompetence, made possible and inevitable by our gigantic investment in technology and development that is now on the cusp of taking on its own further development autonomously.
Eventually, knowledge itself will become a grave offense.
Then read the documents Rod posted. He was in a house full of guns, with a family member who couldn't legally own guns, and he was skulking around planning to target religious and ethnic minorities. For once the FBI actually caught a nutjob they knew about before he could go slaughter innocent people.
Why raid the home? There are more civilized ways to deal with a potencial threat. The suspect is a minor. The FBI should have informed the parents. The government does not care about parental rights. Why did the FBI bring his religion into the discussion? This sound like an FBI set up to persecute Catholics.
"The FBI should have informed the parents"? Really? The kid had said online that he was going to use his AR-15 to shoot up a synagogue on a specific date. He had spoken online about how he wanted to shoot black people. He lived in a house full of guns to which he had access. His dad is a convicted felon So: "Hello, Mr. Convicted Felon, sir, we're here to advise you that your son is threatening to kill Jews this weekend. Might want to look into that. Sorry to bother you.")
Parents don't have the right to be consulted by the FBI for permission to act against their 15-year-old son who posted online videos in which he narrates how the places his filming need to be attacked, and who posts photos of his AR-15 along with threats to kill Jews at a synagogue.
The kid had a prayer card of St Michael the Archangel on the magazine of the weapon he said he would use to kill people. And you honestly think this is an anti-Catholic plot? Think, man!
I don't think from re- reading the affidavit that the kid was imminently planning to attack the synagogue on an upcoming Saturday. I think that the "Saturday" in question was in April and would have come and gone before this investigation was fully enjoined in May.
I’m not sure you were exercising due diligence here. But, I’m happy you rectified your comments once you learned. Ignore the haters and be proud of yourself. 😀
We can and should have higher standards than hyper partisans and extremists of all orientations. Acknowledging the truth regardless of the source and following where it leads should be one of the things that sets Christians apart from the broader culture as that’s a great gift of legacy from our predecessors. Rod found out his initial reaction was misguided and corrected it as soon as he became aware of that. He deserves no special praise for that but rather acknowledgement he did what Christians should expect of themselves and others.
Eh, I still feel this ultimately plays in to the Left's side more than anything. Main issues being
#1) I'm still not entirely sure I believe the warrants put out by the FBI, considering how they have absolutely no oversight and routinely lie to entrap conservatives
#2) the charges themselves were dropped anyway, meaning there was no serious concern after the swatting.
and finally
#3) plenty of people make what could be construed as threats on social media. But only conservatives get whacked for it.
So in the end, conservatives continue to play by the rules, while the Left doesn't. It just feels like a losing strategy to help the Liberals go after their enemies
Look: READ THE WARRANT. We are not talking a criminal trial here. We are talking about whether or not the FBI was justified in taking this seriously, based on the kid's online behavior -- including making specific, direct threats of terrorist action -- and the fact that a number of witnesses had seen him lurking around. It is a good thing if the FBI decided, upon further investigation, not to charge the kid. But the kid gave them ample reason to intervene, especially given that the house was full of firearms to which the kid had access. The Rufinis portrayed themselves FOR FUNDRAISING PURPOSES as victims of overly aggressive tactics by the federal government, driven by prejudice against traditionalist Catholics. This is a tendentious story at best. "Who, whom?" is morally rotten when the Left employs it; it smells no better when our side does it.
But the left does do it, so I see no reason why we should let them win at this game.
Saul Alinsky always said "make the enemy live up to their own rules". The Left is clearly an expert at this tactic, knowing the Right will always apologize when pushed. At any rate, given the FBI's track record, I still find accusations and warrants to hold dubious weight
I have to disagree. What moral superiority do we have at all if we sink to playing by the same rules. If we truly believe then we know we will be judged … I’d rather face the Lord knowing I tried to do what was right and just. I believe right and just will always prevail.
I agree, my only difference is I don't think it's wrong to support a kid who was unfairly swatted. If he were convicted of rape or murder, that's a different story, but saying edgy things online doesn't cut the mustard
"Unfairly swatted"? You surely know this is dishonest. The kid repeatedly went online to talk with his neo-Nazi pals about plans to use his AR-15 to attack a synagogue, on a specific date. He also encouraged the firebombing of a Masonic temple. He had been seen by many people wandering around suspiciously in the area. FBI found the house full of guns, to which this kid had access.
I dislike the FBI and would like much of it dismantled and reformed but they did right to track down the Ruffini boy. We don't know whether the Ruffini boy was serious or just a dumb kid blowing smoke.
That's corrupt. It really is. We are not talking about abstractions here. We are talking about human beings that could have been murdered if this kid had made good on his threats -- and he had the means. I don't want to live in a society in which radicals of either left or right have free reign to shoot people they hate. If you believe in the Leninist principle of "who, whom," then you are no better than the Leftists who do.
You find the accusations and warrants "to hold dubious weight" because you don't like the FBI? I don't like the way it has behaved either, but this affidavit produced specific, documented evidence to the judge. Unless you know something I don't, it sounds like you reject the warrant because you don't want it to be true.
None of this is a zero-sum game. The existence of violent, evil-minded people on the Right does not negate their existence on the Left, and vice versa. "Let them win at this game"? Who "wins" when a radicalized teenager brags online that he's going to murder Jews at a synagogue, and does it? Or what happens when he brags about that plan, gets arrested, and for whatever reason the investigators conclude that it was an empty threat? Is that a win? Maybe a win for that family, in that their boy was not as far gone as they had reason to think, but in what sense is this a "win" for the Left? What a weird way to think about the world.
When the headmaster of my kids' school who was a secret online racist was exposed a year ago, was that a "win" for the Left? I'd say it was a tragedy, but it was a "win" for the kids in the school, whose hearts and minds are safer from the influence of a man who admitted under an online persona that he was a rising star in the classical Christian schooling world, and that he was going to quietly use his increased influence to radicalize students to white nationalism. Had he not been discovered, outed, and removed, would that have been a "win" for the Right? Not any Right that I want anything to do with, that's for sure.
Maybe I'm a bit different in that regard, in that I actually have a morbid respect for the tactics of Marxists, particularly because they have been so successful. Think about how quickly they were able to turn a thoroughly Christian society into a secular, progressive one by stubbornly pushing through. My own business prof (a Reagan guy) always said Alinsky was second to Reagan as his personal hero.
If the main goal is to flip the script, and revert to a Christian society, it makes sense that we would study and make use of these clearly successful tactics. What did the US do right after WWII? Pardon all the Nazi scientists and have them work on their rocket programs (and the germans didn't even win). My point is, we have been given a veritable goldmine of methods to completely destabilize a ruling regime, and I think it would be foolish to turn our noses at it
I don't mean you should become Marxist, as in believe in their ideology.
I'm talking about mythology.
Here's an example, some of the best physics textbooks in the 20th century were written in Soviet Russia. The USSR was quite brilliant in their methods for exploring physics and mathematics. So doesn't it make sense to learn from those books, regardless of their authors' politics?
I did, Mr. Dreher. I just have trouble believing a word of it. At this point you’ll find that for people in my age range and younger the FBI could say the sky is blue and our first reaction would be to go outside and check for ourselves.
This goes double if like me (and like Hiroyuki if his profile picture is any indication, hehe) you’ve spent any time in video game chat rooms or Discord servers, where it’s become a trend for political conversations to be derailed by suspicious persons butting in and going, ‘hey wouldn’t you politically active young men like to kill all the n****s and do a domestic terrorism? Where are you guys from? Would you like to purchase Nazi memorabilia? What’s your phone number?’ Mr. Federal Agent, I’m here to play card games.
The feds have developed a reputation for following (nigh-stalking) young men just like this guy on social media and trying to place them in situations where they can get an excuse (however flimsy and misleading) to make an arrest. Add to that their existing reputation for cheating, lying and shooting dogs and hey - this kid may not be a saint, but I just have a lot of trouble taking the FBI at its word.
It's not that there are no rules, it's that conservatives are going above and beyond to enforce discipline when the government itself won't push further.
This case is a perfect example, where I think the only place where this family is being discussed is within conservative circles.
The FBI dropped the case, so why pursue the matter further? My opinion is that no law was broken, no rules were shattered, so why do some on the Right decide to hold a kid's feet to the fire when *even the government* has backed off?
From what I read on the affidavit, other than his proximity to the firearms as a resident in the house, there appears to be no direct evidence or proof that the father has "possessed" any of the firearms in the common understanding of the term. The firearms are registered to the uncle. The father was not apprehended with a gun. He is not accused of being seen with a firearms stalking the school or synagogue, etc. (I could have missed it. Was reading quickly and I'll go back and check again.)
Convicted felons live in homes with firearms owned by other people all the time. G. Gordon Liddy was known to joke that as a convicted felon he wasn't allowed to own firearms, but that Mrs. Lindy had rather large collection.
So it's okay for a convicted felon to have constructive possession of a firearm actually owned by another person in the house in which he resides... until its not. Pretty weak sauce, IMO. It does reek of pettiness at this point because...
If I understand the situation correctly, the Federal charges against the juvenile have been dropped while state charges are still pending. I question why Federal charges were even placed in the first place once his identity and age were known.
The Federal system isn't really set up to handle juvenile offenders. It can, but there are a lot of hoops to jump through to make it happen. The state system is better able to handle juveniles with much greater efficiency. In my experience, the Feebs would always pass on known juvenile offenders in favor of prosecution in state court when you're dealing with a situation in which there are offenses occurring in concurrent jurisdictions (Federal and state.)
I'm going to go back and reread the post again to make sure I'm not missing things. More later.
Well, as I said, it seems overly aggressive for the cops to charge the father here. I'm not defending that. There might be a defense for it, but I'm not going to agree, not at this point.
I posted the warrant because it's where the facts that showed why the FBI raided this house could be found. These details present a far different story than the sympathetic one the Rufinis fund-raised with, IMHO.
I spent some time digging into it below. It doesn't look like the dad's being charged with anything related to being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm. His charges have to do with the boy's possession/ use of the firearm unsupervised or being inadequately supervised or something.
Other accounts say that the uncle lives in an "in- law apartment" in the basement, so that fact would make it difficult to put the father in possession of the weapons. WHich is as it should be, IMO.
I appreciate your law-enforcement perspective on this. Are there ever cases where a felon who can't own firearms is also not allowed to be in a residence where others own firearms or where the convicted felon would be in proximity to firearms?
NETTR is an incoherent position, or even *attitude*, for any Christian to take. That our federal agencies sadly show evidence of living by NETTL doesn’t make it any more coherent.
Nobody said it was going to be easy. In fact, Our Lord said precisely the opposite.
It has everything to do with the Ruffini case. The United States has a two-tier justice system. That is the point. The FBI should not have raided the home. The FBI abused its power.
The FBI raided and held Pastor Houck's family at gunpoint. What did Houck do? He protested at an abortion clinic and pushed away an agitator who got in the face of his son.
Here's the double standard.
Let's take the case of the transgender in Colorado Springs who was planning to shoot up a school in my daughter district in April. Her house was not raided. The investigators knocked on her door. Her parents were not arrested. No one was held at gunpoint. However, the suspect posed a greater threat than Ruffini.
Upon arriving at the Whitworth home, investigators found a "manifesto," including references to past school shooters, drawings that appeared to look like school floor plans, instructions on how to build a detonator to a bomb and more material suggesting Whitworth was actively planning a massacre.
No firearms were found in the home, but according to the arrest report, Whitworth was actively planning to obtain them, and officers reportedly found a liquid in the home used for cleaning guns.
Whitworth also had materials identifying two other schools that were "main targets" for the attempted massacre, including another they had attended for a brief time.
The question is why the FBI is harassing Catholics and Christians. What threat do Christians pose? Why is there a two-tier justice system? These are the questions we should be asking.
The affidavit clearly indicates that an investigation is warranted. A house raid? That is excessive force.
Dreher should not have to apologize for linking a post to help raise money for Ruffini's legal fees. There is always the presumption of innocence. The principle that every person charged with a crime should be afforded a fair and vigorous defense is a cornerstone of modern legal systems, particularly in democratic societies. Our justice system has not treated him fairly so far.
Ruffini is a minor. Maybe with help and God's intervention he can turn his life around. I surely hope so. I will pray for him. I ask you to do the same.
Whitworth was arrested, was kept in jail on higher bail because he/she (I can't tell if this person is male or female) said he/she would follow through with the attack if released, and has plead guilty to a fourth-degree felony, Second-Degree Assault, and could get up to 16 years in prison at sentencing in January. That's no slap on the wrist. If I'm reading the news reports correctly, Whitworth faces three more charges.
Also, in the Whitworth case, it appears the initial response was from the local sheriff, not the FBI, responding to calls from family members at the home saying the kid was ranting and threatening to shoot up a school. The FBI doesn't seem to have had Whitworth on their radar screen because he/she, despite being obviously effed in the head, wasn't stupid enough to put mass-murder plans on the Internet...
And let's not forget Jack Teixeira, the 21-year-old Air Force guardsman, who allegedly leaked DOD documents to his gamer group, whisked away by a SWAT team while doing his homework as drones buzzed overhead.
If this kid had shot up the synagogue, and the FBI had admitted that they had him on their radar, knew about the threatened attack, knew he had access to a small arsenal of weapons, but had done nothing, they'd have been raked over the coals, and justifiably so. It's been over 20 years since 9/11, and any moron who still thinks they can publicly threaten religiously motivated violence without serious repurcussions deserves what they get.
It's amusing and a bit sad to see trad-Catholic media hyping the kid as a "volunteer firefighter and altar boy" in the same way the lefty media might spin a bad black kid as an "honor student."
Exactly so! If one wants to support this family financially, fine, go ahead. But please don't pretend this was a poor innocent altar boy picked on the by big, bad government.
"Pre-crime" ? No, there was already a breach of the law, and every reason to act upon it.
quote:
The Supreme Court has held that "advocacy of the use of force" is unprotected when it is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action" and is "likely to incite or produce such action".[8]
In the early 20th century, incitement was determined by the "clear and present danger" standard established in Schenck v. United States (1919), in which Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. observed: "The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent."[9]
My late father, God rest his soul, once told me “don’t believe anything you hear & only half of what you see.” Not literally of course, but in regard to gossip, jumping to conclusions, stuff like that. Very wise advice although tongue in cheek.
Part of the job of the police is to make sure "pre-crimes" don't become actual crimes, rather than just coming in with sirens blaring when the bodies are lying on the ground. While I am as opposed as anyone to prosecutions for thought crimes, public proclamations of an intent to commit violent mass murder must be investigated. Call it prevention, or proactive policing, but it's entirely appropriate.
Normal police forces will deny strenuously that they are in the general business of preventing crime. They will say their business is to be present to discourage crime generally, and to solve crimes when they happen.
Rod, if you have a link to the full arrest warrant and affidavit for Jeremiah Ruffini, I would like to read the whole thing to be sure I understand what's going on. I read the American Greatness article, which is obviously sympathetic to the Ruffinis, but it does help paint a clearer picture of the situation through some of the smaller details that others might gloss over.
A few things to point out and clarify about the posted warrant and other things I've picked up from some of the other reporting on this story:
1. It does not appear that anyone is now facing or has ever faced Federal criminal charges for any of this. From the American Greatness story, that appears to have mostly been cobbled together from the family's account of events on GiveSendGo, and from an account at Catholic Vote, it seems that the boy was charged with something that eventually resulted in a misdemeanor conviction for "breach of peace."
2. It does not appear that the father, Jeremiah Ruffini, is facing any type of Federal or felony state charges for being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm. He and his brother, the actual owner of the firearms, appear to be facing state charges for allowing the boy to have access to the firearms and use them in a way that the state thinks is an offense. That's one reason I'd like to see the whole arrest warrant and affidavit, so I can see exactly what they're being charged with and what the elements are.
3. The affidavit was submitted and sworn to in state court by a Connecticut State Police detective named Sean Brennan assigned to the FBI as a Federal Task Force Officer (TFO) as part of the one of the myriad of Joint Terrorism Task Forces that absolutely every jurisdiction with a population of more people than livestock jumped on in the wake of 9/11. We're not chasing Muslim terrorists as much, so now they're chasing white supremacists. The only people who get more excited about playing Junior G- man than actual G-men do are police officers assigned as TFOs. (Full disclosure: Once upon a time, I was a TFO. I got over it.)
Here's what I think happened: Elements within the FBI/ CSP/ New Haven PD JTTF were, at a minimum, monitoring Telegram and other social media for "extremists." Whether or not they were actively participating in them is not known (although I personally suspect that they were) but, at a minimum they knew in April of 2023 that the boy was posting threatening content about attacking synagogues and the Freemasons...
And did nothing about it until May of 2023 when the principal of the high school called to report the suspicious person leaving the "It's OK to be White" flyer near the school. Now Somebody In The Community has a complaint and Something had to be done.
So, they took (finally) took action on a suspect that had made concerning statements at least weeks earlier. To a certain degree that's defensible as they now had something that suggested whoever they had been monitoring was doing a little more than just talking shit online. OTOH, Karen asked to see the manager over a note being found that DOES NOT MAKE ANY THREATS at all and suddenly everybody's working overtime.
They used a claim of exigency to get Telegram to release the information they needed about the suspect account without a warrant or a subpoena (although they should have filed for and submitted one after they got the return from Telegram) in order to get the information they needed from the suspect's internet service provider to identify the boy. Then they looked him up on Facebook or TikTok or whatever to get his pictures. (In paragraph 7, when he's talking about "reliable source revealing the identity of the subject" and how "FBI New Haven exploited this information" using "both closed source and open source databases," that's what he's talking about. I also suspect some of the information came from members of the JTTF actually working undercover in the Telegram chats themselves. Don't know that, but the argle- bargle in paragraph 7 is the kind of stuff you put in an affidavit to firm up your probable cause without admitting in a public document that you were doing undercover stuff.)
They did a background on the family, discovered dad was a convicted felon and uncle had a bunch of registered firearms, and decided to use CT's Red Flag law to get into the house. Once it was determined that the primary suspect was a juvenile, the actual FBI agents would have stood down in terms of being the primary investigators, although it appears that FBI assets were used to support what was at that point a State criminal investigation.
The boy was, I suspect, overcharged with a felony for terroristic threats or something, which up until the principal turned in the "OK to be white" note, no one was actually taking that seriously. (Go back and look at the timeline. Whoever was monitoring/ participating in the Telegram chats would have had the pictures and videos of the rifle and him walking around the school back in April. Nothing substantial was done until an uncontrollable member of the general public had a concern in May.)
That case ended up with a weak- ass plea to disturbing the peace because... that's all he really did. A lot of man hours and overtime has been expended with very little to show for it, so now Dad and Uncle have caught equally weak charges in order to get something on somebody to justify the expenditure.
TL/DR: The Ruffinis are not angels, but the apparatus of the state is being weaponized against them in pursuit of something that nobody was taking seriously until someone outside the silo complained. You don't have to buy their claims of being Trad Catholic Martyrs to think that the whole situation stinks and kick in a few bucks to help them out.
If you want to get a reaction by posting a Latin Rite Night flyer to a bulletin board, tying a rope to a branch and then going back your wood shop to fashion a swing seat, or accidentally dropping a banana peel within a 500-yard radius of the BSU, then Merrick Garland is your man.
I think we are all learning that you can't trust anything breaking on the internet. There is always more to the story. If the internet reports say your mother loves you, check it out!
Yes, it's always a good idea to wait a while, to see how the initial narrative might end up changing quite a bit. This is true not only for local news stories, or stories like this one, but even for "news" about international or foreign events. The initial reports can often turn out to be based on falsehoods, exaggerations, distortions, sometimes intentionally so, in order to provoke a particular response.
Yes -- but I believe we all should have learned that quite some time ago.
The 48 hour rule is a good start.
Live not by lies? When are you going to start? I don't know much about this Ruffini character. Maybe he is a misguided youth. Ask yourself, if Ruffini were black, latino, queer, Antifa, BLM or transgender, would the FBI have raided his home and arrested his family? No. Why the double standard? Why are conservatives and even extreme right wingers treated much more harshly than Neo Marxist leftists? Do we not have equality under the law? Is Ruffini guilty until proven innocent too? The law needs to be applied equally. That is what we should be fighting for.
Is Rod suggesting the law shouldn't be applied equally? All he is saying is that based on additional information he does not find this a cause he wishes to give money to. What so objectionable about that? It's his judgment to make.
What? You are stuck in a narrative and not looking at facts. Read the affidavit: the kid allegedly made specific threats against places, posted images of himself with the AR-15 that he had at home, and said online that he was going to use it against the synagogue. Is it really morally right to fall back on "they wouldn't have done this to leftists"? I hope they would, given the same set of facts, but even if they didn't, should far-right extremists who make the kinds of threats this AR-15 kid did get a pass?
Second, nobody is "convicting" any Rufini. My point was simply that the Rufini family story, as presented by them on GiveSendGo, was highly misleading. If you still want to donate to them, have at it. I thoughtlessly retweeted that GiveSendGo appeal because the story, as presented by Rufini, triggered my priors. I backed down only after some conservative Catholics who normally would sympathize with a Rufini warned me that there was a lot more to this than Rufini indicated. I could have just quietly deleted my initial tweet, but I felt bad that somebody might have given to their cause because I had brought it to their attention. I needed to own my own mistake.
Being stuck in a narrative seems to be a rather wide-spread condition.
That is certainly true regardless of whatever “side” people are.
I'm in favor of your decision to remove your Tweet. I'm also willing to take the serious claims in the warrant at face value and assume the kid was genuinely radicalized online into hatred as well as primed for action. That's terrifying.
At the same time, I'm not willing to assume the FBI was innocent of targeting in this case. What we don't know is who exactly was in those Telegram chat groups; were there FBI agents posing as fellow radicals and soliciting the pictures and suggesting or encouraging the kid's activity, as claimed by the family? We have no idea what the full picture is because we only have the damning parts selected by the FBI for their warrant.
So I'm with you in feeling truly sorry for this family, and in your concern that they showed themselves lacking integrity by leaving out their own share of damning facts in their fund-raising appeal. But I'm not willing to assume the FBI isn't themselves responsible for the kid being radicalized in the first place. They've already proven they do play dirty and they do target conservatives for setups as "domestic terrorists." While I wouldn't donate to this family, that's primarily because I can't tell what the true, whole story is. And I wouldn't want my funds going to anything other than rehabilitation of the boy. I just hope his future hasn't been ruined by this mess.
Having spent some time in "Orthodox" groups on Telegram, I wouldn't be surprised if there were Feds there as well. I am appalled at how much hate shows up in many of those groups. I'm not saying that there aren't plenty of the OrthoBros who wouldn't say some of this stuff, but it's so over the top there sometimes that one wonders if there aren't instigators trying to get people to say stuff that's way past the pale. I mean, I saw at least one conversation where it got so nuts that people stopped participating because they thought the one guy might be a Fed trying to get everybody else.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were feds trying to stir stuff up. We know that they do that. Still, each and every young man who participates in these forums is responsible for his own thoughts, words, and actions. Whether it's a federal agent trolling, or an authentic zealot, it doesn't matter: you are responsible for your own behavior. It doesn't make it okay if the guy goading you to say extremist and violent things is a fed or a bona fide racist/anti-Semite: you, young man, should turn from this evil.
That is absolutely true! One of the things that terrified me the most about God when I was a kid was learning a) He sees everything and b) we're going to be called to account for everything that we do - even to the thoughts we entertain. I know a lot of people have gotten away from talking about God as anything but a kind and loving entity, but seriously, if they actually believe in God, do they think that such awful talk is pleasing to Him? Or do they think that since it's on Telegram, it's hidden away?
I got Telegram in early 2018 because back then, there was an initiative from the Russian Orthodox Church to use the popularity of Telegram (as a Russian app) in Russia to help Orthodox Christians find other Orthodox Christians living near to each other to actually find each other. The thing may have had some official help within Telegram as well; I don't remember anymore. I've been interested in Orthodoxy online since 2002, so even being in the US, and having poor Russian skills, I downloaded it to see if it worked. After the big Twitter crackdowns, a lot of users from the US started using it, assuming that the Russian leadership of Telegram isn't going to be quite as keen to censor people. (Ironic, isn't it?) Some would argue that Telegram and Gab have so much awful content because there's a lot less censorship, and I'm sure part of that is true, but I also wouldn't be surprised if there are people out there churning this stuff out on those platforms for the sake of making the platforms look awful to keep normal people from wanting to be part of them and/or finding people who will follow and participate in horrible discussions or even actions.
Rod was saying he would not opine on whether there was or was not entrapment, correct? (edit: Rod's post came up while I was writing mine to say he would not be surprised there were feds, but the young man was responsible - I wrote this edit in these parenthesis after seeing Rod's post.)
It is interesting. Look at both similarities and differences regarding the Whitmer entrappers. They used extreme methods, had to beg those who kidnapped to do it many, many times, had to provide tools, ideas for methods, etc. Accused perps were out of their mind mix of potheads and, I think I recall, mentally disabled. Nothing close to the kidnapping attempt would have happened with out Feds. Once I learned details (not given here) I felt this was the unusual case where entrapment was indeed a defense.
However - look at the excerpts from two other posters "ABN chat: do it during the service" and "Throw Away: What date are you looking to do the activism". Both are very suspect, the first is goading by who knows who, the second is highly suspect because speaking of doing violence is free speech until a specific date is specified.
So let's say the kid was entrapped. Well, he was not charged, just forced to get mental help, if I read correctly. Maybe they did not want to prosecute an entrapment case? No one knows.
But bottom line - the kid was going to do violence and stated he was. He did not appear to need encouragement to do violence. He did sort of get it regarding time to do it - (do it during service, when will you do it?).
Based on what we can see here, whether or not Feds spoke in the chat room, something should have happened to the kid - legal case or mandatory mental help. Something should have happened to the father who gave him access to guns. So - I believe - entrapment can be a real defense where the defendant should not be convicted. On the other hand, there are times that even though entrapment happened, there should be a conviction.
I agree with your basic arguments here, though it's not clear to me that the father violated the law if he was not found in personal possession of a gun. (Also, I don't know if the mere fact the kid had access violated the law.) I hope no one read my comment above as excusing the boy from his behavior or claiming law enforcement should not have taken action. Regardless who the actors on that chat thread were, he did sound ready to strike and I shudder to think what might have happened if he hadn't been stopped.
But an equally big concern to me is how much legitimate cause we all have these days to question the integrity of LEOs, especially at the federal level. Rod himself is in the position of writing the above essay exactly because his own "priors" were to distrust the justness of the charges after hearing the family was Catholic. What does that say about the state of America? About how badly our justice system is failing?
That's why I'm willing to believe both that the kid was actually radicalized and that federal agents may well have orchestrated that process. While it's a good thing the boy was prevented from carrying out any plans, it is inexcusable that federal law enforcement is so selective about who they investigate, that they will overlook blatant criminal behavior by individuals in some groups, and bend over backwards to go after, even entrap, individuals in other groups. We are more and more becoming a banana republic.
It could also be actual white supremacists trying to recruit.
I’m afraid that confessions and admissions are regarded as mere weakness by a growing cohort of morally one-dimensional people of either or any political affiliation.
I ascribe such moral illiteracy and incompetence to the broader general illiteracy and incompetence that we are beginning to see in all arenas of human life as civilization visibly dissolves.
And although it’s tempting to map this decadence onto the left-right divide, I resist that mapping. It’s the logic of the West playing out. The essential feature of every technical advance has been to render entire categories of previous endeavor obsolete. Scientific advance is, economically speaking, an index of capital accumulation—intellectual capital and human capital as well as good old industrial capital that can build particle accelerators and electron scanning microscopes and space probes (and the missile technology that puts them into their trajectories).
We are now looking at our greatest technological achievement so far—universal ignorance and incompetence, made possible and inevitable by our gigantic investment in technology and development that is now on the cusp of taking on its own further development autonomously.
Eventually, knowledge itself will become a grave offense.
Thank God I’m old.
"I don't know much about this Ruffini character."
Then read the documents Rod posted. He was in a house full of guns, with a family member who couldn't legally own guns, and he was skulking around planning to target religious and ethnic minorities. For once the FBI actually caught a nutjob they knew about before he could go slaughter innocent people.
Why raid the home? There are more civilized ways to deal with a potencial threat. The suspect is a minor. The FBI should have informed the parents. The government does not care about parental rights. Why did the FBI bring his religion into the discussion? This sound like an FBI set up to persecute Catholics.
"The FBI should have informed the parents"? Really? The kid had said online that he was going to use his AR-15 to shoot up a synagogue on a specific date. He had spoken online about how he wanted to shoot black people. He lived in a house full of guns to which he had access. His dad is a convicted felon So: "Hello, Mr. Convicted Felon, sir, we're here to advise you that your son is threatening to kill Jews this weekend. Might want to look into that. Sorry to bother you.")
Parents don't have the right to be consulted by the FBI for permission to act against their 15-year-old son who posted online videos in which he narrates how the places his filming need to be attacked, and who posts photos of his AR-15 along with threats to kill Jews at a synagogue.
The kid had a prayer card of St Michael the Archangel on the magazine of the weapon he said he would use to kill people. And you honestly think this is an anti-Catholic plot? Think, man!
I don't think from re- reading the affidavit that the kid was imminently planning to attack the synagogue on an upcoming Saturday. I think that the "Saturday" in question was in April and would have come and gone before this investigation was fully enjoined in May.
I’m not sure you were exercising due diligence here. But, I’m happy you rectified your comments once you learned. Ignore the haters and be proud of yourself. 😀
We can and should have higher standards than hyper partisans and extremists of all orientations. Acknowledging the truth regardless of the source and following where it leads should be one of the things that sets Christians apart from the broader culture as that’s a great gift of legacy from our predecessors. Rod found out his initial reaction was misguided and corrected it as soon as he became aware of that. He deserves no special praise for that but rather acknowledgement he did what Christians should expect of themselves and others.
Eh, I still feel this ultimately plays in to the Left's side more than anything. Main issues being
#1) I'm still not entirely sure I believe the warrants put out by the FBI, considering how they have absolutely no oversight and routinely lie to entrap conservatives
#2) the charges themselves were dropped anyway, meaning there was no serious concern after the swatting.
and finally
#3) plenty of people make what could be construed as threats on social media. But only conservatives get whacked for it.
So in the end, conservatives continue to play by the rules, while the Left doesn't. It just feels like a losing strategy to help the Liberals go after their enemies
Look: READ THE WARRANT. We are not talking a criminal trial here. We are talking about whether or not the FBI was justified in taking this seriously, based on the kid's online behavior -- including making specific, direct threats of terrorist action -- and the fact that a number of witnesses had seen him lurking around. It is a good thing if the FBI decided, upon further investigation, not to charge the kid. But the kid gave them ample reason to intervene, especially given that the house was full of firearms to which the kid had access. The Rufinis portrayed themselves FOR FUNDRAISING PURPOSES as victims of overly aggressive tactics by the federal government, driven by prejudice against traditionalist Catholics. This is a tendentious story at best. "Who, whom?" is morally rotten when the Left employs it; it smells no better when our side does it.
But the left does do it, so I see no reason why we should let them win at this game.
Saul Alinsky always said "make the enemy live up to their own rules". The Left is clearly an expert at this tactic, knowing the Right will always apologize when pushed. At any rate, given the FBI's track record, I still find accusations and warrants to hold dubious weight
I have to disagree. What moral superiority do we have at all if we sink to playing by the same rules. If we truly believe then we know we will be judged … I’d rather face the Lord knowing I tried to do what was right and just. I believe right and just will always prevail.
I agree, my only difference is I don't think it's wrong to support a kid who was unfairly swatted. If he were convicted of rape or murder, that's a different story, but saying edgy things online doesn't cut the mustard
"Unfairly swatted"? You surely know this is dishonest. The kid repeatedly went online to talk with his neo-Nazi pals about plans to use his AR-15 to attack a synagogue, on a specific date. He also encouraged the firebombing of a Masonic temple. He had been seen by many people wandering around suspiciously in the area. FBI found the house full of guns, to which this kid had access.
"Unfairly swatted" my big toe!
I dislike the FBI and would like much of it dismantled and reformed but they did right to track down the Ruffini boy. We don't know whether the Ruffini boy was serious or just a dumb kid blowing smoke.
That's corrupt. It really is. We are not talking about abstractions here. We are talking about human beings that could have been murdered if this kid had made good on his threats -- and he had the means. I don't want to live in a society in which radicals of either left or right have free reign to shoot people they hate. If you believe in the Leninist principle of "who, whom," then you are no better than the Leftists who do.
You find the accusations and warrants "to hold dubious weight" because you don't like the FBI? I don't like the way it has behaved either, but this affidavit produced specific, documented evidence to the judge. Unless you know something I don't, it sounds like you reject the warrant because you don't want it to be true.
None of this is a zero-sum game. The existence of violent, evil-minded people on the Right does not negate their existence on the Left, and vice versa. "Let them win at this game"? Who "wins" when a radicalized teenager brags online that he's going to murder Jews at a synagogue, and does it? Or what happens when he brags about that plan, gets arrested, and for whatever reason the investigators conclude that it was an empty threat? Is that a win? Maybe a win for that family, in that their boy was not as far gone as they had reason to think, but in what sense is this a "win" for the Left? What a weird way to think about the world.
When the headmaster of my kids' school who was a secret online racist was exposed a year ago, was that a "win" for the Left? I'd say it was a tragedy, but it was a "win" for the kids in the school, whose hearts and minds are safer from the influence of a man who admitted under an online persona that he was a rising star in the classical Christian schooling world, and that he was going to quietly use his increased influence to radicalize students to white nationalism. Had he not been discovered, outed, and removed, would that have been a "win" for the Right? Not any Right that I want anything to do with, that's for sure.
Maybe I'm a bit different in that regard, in that I actually have a morbid respect for the tactics of Marxists, particularly because they have been so successful. Think about how quickly they were able to turn a thoroughly Christian society into a secular, progressive one by stubbornly pushing through. My own business prof (a Reagan guy) always said Alinsky was second to Reagan as his personal hero.
If the main goal is to flip the script, and revert to a Christian society, it makes sense that we would study and make use of these clearly successful tactics. What did the US do right after WWII? Pardon all the Nazi scientists and have them work on their rocket programs (and the germans didn't even win). My point is, we have been given a veritable goldmine of methods to completely destabilize a ruling regime, and I think it would be foolish to turn our noses at it
Last I checked Marxist states collapsed or morphed into "Marxist in name only". You have a strange definition of success.
Oh, and how can any Christian make the amoral argument that the end justifies the means?
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" (Matthew 8:36).
I don't mean you should become Marxist, as in believe in their ideology.
I'm talking about mythology.
Here's an example, some of the best physics textbooks in the 20th century were written in Soviet Russia. The USSR was quite brilliant in their methods for exploring physics and mathematics. So doesn't it make sense to learn from those books, regardless of their authors' politics?
> "READ THE WARRANT”
I did, Mr. Dreher. I just have trouble believing a word of it. At this point you’ll find that for people in my age range and younger the FBI could say the sky is blue and our first reaction would be to go outside and check for ourselves.
This goes double if like me (and like Hiroyuki if his profile picture is any indication, hehe) you’ve spent any time in video game chat rooms or Discord servers, where it’s become a trend for political conversations to be derailed by suspicious persons butting in and going, ‘hey wouldn’t you politically active young men like to kill all the n****s and do a domestic terrorism? Where are you guys from? Would you like to purchase Nazi memorabilia? What’s your phone number?’ Mr. Federal Agent, I’m here to play card games.
The feds have developed a reputation for following (nigh-stalking) young men just like this guy on social media and trying to place them in situations where they can get an excuse (however flimsy and misleading) to make an arrest. Add to that their existing reputation for cheating, lying and shooting dogs and hey - this kid may not be a saint, but I just have a lot of trouble taking the FBI at its word.
We've just seen in the last few years that the FBI cooked up an international conspiracy involving the former president using fake leaked documents.
Given the whole Russiagate fiasco, why anyone takes that agency on its word is beyond me
Is it not possible that the solution to this alleged double standard is to, y'know, *get the Left to play by the rules*?
Are you sure you really want to live a world where there are no rules?
If you're copying the bad behavior of your enemies, then they've already won. Sadly, too many on the American Right are doing so.
It's not that there are no rules, it's that conservatives are going above and beyond to enforce discipline when the government itself won't push further.
This case is a perfect example, where I think the only place where this family is being discussed is within conservative circles.
The FBI dropped the case, so why pursue the matter further? My opinion is that no law was broken, no rules were shattered, so why do some on the Right decide to hold a kid's feet to the fire when *even the government* has backed off?
Couple of thoughts:
From what I read on the affidavit, other than his proximity to the firearms as a resident in the house, there appears to be no direct evidence or proof that the father has "possessed" any of the firearms in the common understanding of the term. The firearms are registered to the uncle. The father was not apprehended with a gun. He is not accused of being seen with a firearms stalking the school or synagogue, etc. (I could have missed it. Was reading quickly and I'll go back and check again.)
Convicted felons live in homes with firearms owned by other people all the time. G. Gordon Liddy was known to joke that as a convicted felon he wasn't allowed to own firearms, but that Mrs. Lindy had rather large collection.
So it's okay for a convicted felon to have constructive possession of a firearm actually owned by another person in the house in which he resides... until its not. Pretty weak sauce, IMO. It does reek of pettiness at this point because...
If I understand the situation correctly, the Federal charges against the juvenile have been dropped while state charges are still pending. I question why Federal charges were even placed in the first place once his identity and age were known.
The Federal system isn't really set up to handle juvenile offenders. It can, but there are a lot of hoops to jump through to make it happen. The state system is better able to handle juveniles with much greater efficiency. In my experience, the Feebs would always pass on known juvenile offenders in favor of prosecution in state court when you're dealing with a situation in which there are offenses occurring in concurrent jurisdictions (Federal and state.)
I'm going to go back and reread the post again to make sure I'm not missing things. More later.
Well, as I said, it seems overly aggressive for the cops to charge the father here. I'm not defending that. There might be a defense for it, but I'm not going to agree, not at this point.
I posted the warrant because it's where the facts that showed why the FBI raided this house could be found. These details present a far different story than the sympathetic one the Rufinis fund-raised with, IMHO.
FBI "facts" are not necessarily factual.
"Convicted felons live in homes with firearms owned by other people all the time."
Well, it's not legal in Connecticut for a felon to do so. A friend with a FFL told me so.
I spent some time digging into it below. It doesn't look like the dad's being charged with anything related to being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm. His charges have to do with the boy's possession/ use of the firearm unsupervised or being inadequately supervised or something.
Other accounts say that the uncle lives in an "in- law apartment" in the basement, so that fact would make it difficult to put the father in possession of the weapons. WHich is as it should be, IMO.
I appreciate your law-enforcement perspective on this. Are there ever cases where a felon who can't own firearms is also not allowed to be in a residence where others own firearms or where the convicted felon would be in proximity to firearms?
NETTR is an incoherent position, or even *attitude*, for any Christian to take. That our federal agencies sadly show evidence of living by NETTL doesn’t make it any more coherent.
Nobody said it was going to be easy. In fact, Our Lord said precisely the opposite.
Agreed—it is nihilism simple and pure.
Don't live by lies.
BLM founder gets a pass after spending 6 million on a house.
Border wall builder gets four years in prison for paying himself a salary.
Antifa rioters get monetary compensation
January 6th protesters get up to 22 years in prison.
Does anyone see a pattern here?
https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/2023/04/26/we-build-the-wall-founder-brian-kolfage-sentenced-to-prison/70156215007/
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/04/black-lives-matter-6-million-dollar-house.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/30/january-6-arrest-sentencing-00099158
None of this has anything to do with the Rufini case.
It has everything to do with the Ruffini case. The United States has a two-tier justice system. That is the point. The FBI should not have raided the home. The FBI abused its power.
The FBI raided and held Pastor Houck's family at gunpoint. What did Houck do? He protested at an abortion clinic and pushed away an agitator who got in the face of his son.
Here's the double standard.
Let's take the case of the transgender in Colorado Springs who was planning to shoot up a school in my daughter district in April. Her house was not raided. The investigators knocked on her door. Her parents were not arrested. No one was held at gunpoint. However, the suspect posed a greater threat than Ruffini.
Upon arriving at the Whitworth home, investigators found a "manifesto," including references to past school shooters, drawings that appeared to look like school floor plans, instructions on how to build a detonator to a bomb and more material suggesting Whitworth was actively planning a massacre.
No firearms were found in the home, but according to the arrest report, Whitworth was actively planning to obtain them, and officers reportedly found a liquid in the home used for cleaning guns.
Whitworth also had materials identifying two other schools that were "main targets" for the attempted massacre, including another they had attended for a brief time.
The question is why the FBI is harassing Catholics and Christians. What threat do Christians pose? Why is there a two-tier justice system? These are the questions we should be asking.
The affidavit clearly indicates that an investigation is warranted. A house raid? That is excessive force.
Dreher should not have to apologize for linking a post to help raise money for Ruffini's legal fees. There is always the presumption of innocence. The principle that every person charged with a crime should be afforded a fair and vigorous defense is a cornerstone of modern legal systems, particularly in democratic societies. Our justice system has not treated him fairly so far.
Ruffini is a minor. Maybe with help and God's intervention he can turn his life around. I surely hope so. I will pray for him. I ask you to do the same.
https://abc3340.com/news/nation-world/colorado-trans-teen-arrested-after-police-discover-plans-to-shoot-up-local-schools-churches-transgender-william-whitworth-lilly-colorado-springs
https://www.courant.com/2002/01/18/man-gets-six-year-sentence-in-filenes-robbery/
Whitworth was arrested, was kept in jail on higher bail because he/she (I can't tell if this person is male or female) said he/she would follow through with the attack if released, and has plead guilty to a fourth-degree felony, Second-Degree Assault, and could get up to 16 years in prison at sentencing in January. That's no slap on the wrist. If I'm reading the news reports correctly, Whitworth faces three more charges.
Also, in the Whitworth case, it appears the initial response was from the local sheriff, not the FBI, responding to calls from family members at the home saying the kid was ranting and threatening to shoot up a school. The FBI doesn't seem to have had Whitworth on their radar screen because he/she, despite being obviously effed in the head, wasn't stupid enough to put mass-murder plans on the Internet...
And let's not forget Jack Teixeira, the 21-year-old Air Force guardsman, who allegedly leaked DOD documents to his gamer group, whisked away by a SWAT team while doing his homework as drones buzzed overhead.
Teixeira is still in custody awaiting trial,
If this kid had shot up the synagogue, and the FBI had admitted that they had him on their radar, knew about the threatened attack, knew he had access to a small arsenal of weapons, but had done nothing, they'd have been raked over the coals, and justifiably so. It's been over 20 years since 9/11, and any moron who still thinks they can publicly threaten religiously motivated violence without serious repurcussions deserves what they get.
Now, we have pre crime. Perhaps Elon Musk's neurlink will be mandatory.
The old-fashioned-way of dealing with someone making public threats to kill you was to kill them dead first... This ain't "pre-crime."
The suspect is 15 years old.
15-year-olds don't get a free pass for planning murder.
It's amusing and a bit sad to see trad-Catholic media hyping the kid as a "volunteer firefighter and altar boy" in the same way the lefty media might spin a bad black kid as an "honor student."
Exactly so! If one wants to support this family financially, fine, go ahead. But please don't pretend this was a poor innocent altar boy picked on the by big, bad government.
The bad black kid is usually portrayed as "turning his life around" thereby obviating the police resorting to deadly force.
"Pre-crime" ? No, there was already a breach of the law, and every reason to act upon it.
quote:
The Supreme Court has held that "advocacy of the use of force" is unprotected when it is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action" and is "likely to incite or produce such action".[8]
In the early 20th century, incitement was determined by the "clear and present danger" standard established in Schenck v. United States (1919), in which Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. observed: "The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent."[9]
sources: https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/incitement-to-imminent-lawless-action/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions#cite_note-8
Sad. So often people get into trouble through the weapons that are supposed to "protect" them.
My late father, God rest his soul, once told me “don’t believe anything you hear & only half of what you see.” Not literally of course, but in regard to gossip, jumping to conclusions, stuff like that. Very wise advice although tongue in cheek.
Part of the job of the police is to make sure "pre-crimes" don't become actual crimes, rather than just coming in with sirens blaring when the bodies are lying on the ground. While I am as opposed as anyone to prosecutions for thought crimes, public proclamations of an intent to commit violent mass murder must be investigated. Call it prevention, or proactive policing, but it's entirely appropriate.
Normal police forces will deny strenuously that they are in the general business of preventing crime. They will say their business is to be present to discourage crime generally, and to solve crimes when they happen.
Rod, if you have a link to the full arrest warrant and affidavit for Jeremiah Ruffini, I would like to read the whole thing to be sure I understand what's going on. I read the American Greatness article, which is obviously sympathetic to the Ruffinis, but it does help paint a clearer picture of the situation through some of the smaller details that others might gloss over.
A few things to point out and clarify about the posted warrant and other things I've picked up from some of the other reporting on this story:
1. It does not appear that anyone is now facing or has ever faced Federal criminal charges for any of this. From the American Greatness story, that appears to have mostly been cobbled together from the family's account of events on GiveSendGo, and from an account at Catholic Vote, it seems that the boy was charged with something that eventually resulted in a misdemeanor conviction for "breach of peace."
2. It does not appear that the father, Jeremiah Ruffini, is facing any type of Federal or felony state charges for being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm. He and his brother, the actual owner of the firearms, appear to be facing state charges for allowing the boy to have access to the firearms and use them in a way that the state thinks is an offense. That's one reason I'd like to see the whole arrest warrant and affidavit, so I can see exactly what they're being charged with and what the elements are.
3. The affidavit was submitted and sworn to in state court by a Connecticut State Police detective named Sean Brennan assigned to the FBI as a Federal Task Force Officer (TFO) as part of the one of the myriad of Joint Terrorism Task Forces that absolutely every jurisdiction with a population of more people than livestock jumped on in the wake of 9/11. We're not chasing Muslim terrorists as much, so now they're chasing white supremacists. The only people who get more excited about playing Junior G- man than actual G-men do are police officers assigned as TFOs. (Full disclosure: Once upon a time, I was a TFO. I got over it.)
Here's what I think happened: Elements within the FBI/ CSP/ New Haven PD JTTF were, at a minimum, monitoring Telegram and other social media for "extremists." Whether or not they were actively participating in them is not known (although I personally suspect that they were) but, at a minimum they knew in April of 2023 that the boy was posting threatening content about attacking synagogues and the Freemasons...
And did nothing about it until May of 2023 when the principal of the high school called to report the suspicious person leaving the "It's OK to be White" flyer near the school. Now Somebody In The Community has a complaint and Something had to be done.
So, they took (finally) took action on a suspect that had made concerning statements at least weeks earlier. To a certain degree that's defensible as they now had something that suggested whoever they had been monitoring was doing a little more than just talking shit online. OTOH, Karen asked to see the manager over a note being found that DOES NOT MAKE ANY THREATS at all and suddenly everybody's working overtime.
They used a claim of exigency to get Telegram to release the information they needed about the suspect account without a warrant or a subpoena (although they should have filed for and submitted one after they got the return from Telegram) in order to get the information they needed from the suspect's internet service provider to identify the boy. Then they looked him up on Facebook or TikTok or whatever to get his pictures. (In paragraph 7, when he's talking about "reliable source revealing the identity of the subject" and how "FBI New Haven exploited this information" using "both closed source and open source databases," that's what he's talking about. I also suspect some of the information came from members of the JTTF actually working undercover in the Telegram chats themselves. Don't know that, but the argle- bargle in paragraph 7 is the kind of stuff you put in an affidavit to firm up your probable cause without admitting in a public document that you were doing undercover stuff.)
They did a background on the family, discovered dad was a convicted felon and uncle had a bunch of registered firearms, and decided to use CT's Red Flag law to get into the house. Once it was determined that the primary suspect was a juvenile, the actual FBI agents would have stood down in terms of being the primary investigators, although it appears that FBI assets were used to support what was at that point a State criminal investigation.
The boy was, I suspect, overcharged with a felony for terroristic threats or something, which up until the principal turned in the "OK to be white" note, no one was actually taking that seriously. (Go back and look at the timeline. Whoever was monitoring/ participating in the Telegram chats would have had the pictures and videos of the rifle and him walking around the school back in April. Nothing substantial was done until an uncontrollable member of the general public had a concern in May.)
That case ended up with a weak- ass plea to disturbing the peace because... that's all he really did. A lot of man hours and overtime has been expended with very little to show for it, so now Dad and Uncle have caught equally weak charges in order to get something on somebody to justify the expenditure.
TL/DR: The Ruffinis are not angels, but the apparatus of the state is being weaponized against them in pursuit of something that nobody was taking seriously until someone outside the silo complained. You don't have to buy their claims of being Trad Catholic Martyrs to think that the whole situation stinks and kick in a few bucks to help them out.
If you want to get a reaction by posting a Latin Rite Night flyer to a bulletin board, tying a rope to a branch and then going back your wood shop to fashion a swing seat, or accidentally dropping a banana peel within a 500-yard radius of the BSU, then Merrick Garland is your man.
Lets imagine a close relative -parent, sibling, etc. is Jewish and attends *that* synagogue.
Wouldn't you thank heaven something was done?
Sad to say, the internet provides outlets for the immature to make fools out of themselves. Mix the immaturity with hate and you've got a problem.