Category: Minnesota

Criminal Dies in Minnesota Shootout

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It’s always heartwarming news when cops shoot a white criminal. CNN won’t notice and there won’t be any riots — no “say his name” hashtags on behalf of Dominic Lucas Koch, who was 27 when he died of multiple gunshots after leading police on a 40-mile chase in Minnesota.

We’ll get to the events that culminated in Koch’s death in just a minute, but first allow me to recount his criminal record. Like so many of the felons we routinely highlight in our crime coverage here, Koch was a repeat offender. In his hometown of St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin, Koch was 18 when he was arrested in connection with a case in which one of his buddies, Tyler Chute, had assaulted a sheriff’s deputy. Chute escaped, and two days later, cops got a tip about where he was hiding:

Deputies went to the home Saturday night and were allowed inside. But they were told Chute was not there.
Then something caught their eye.
“A guy was sitting on the couch and cushions were a little askew, and (the deputies) said, ‘Hey, that doesn’t look right,’ ” Sheriff Pete Johnson said.
A deputy asked the man sitting on the sleeper sofa, Dominic Koch, 18, if he knew where Chute was. Koch, who also lives in St. Croix Falls, said he did not, according to a sheriff’s report.
The deputy moved the cushions and found Chute hiding inside the sofa, the report states.
Chute was taken into custody, and Koch was arrested on suspicion of obstructing an officer.

After harboring a fugitive from justice in 2012, Koch’s criminal career next made headlines in 2018, when he got busted with meth:

A Minnesota woman and St. Croix Falls man were arrested in Clark County after police found drugs in their vehicle.
Officials responded to a complaint that someone stole a purse in Fairchild around 3:30 p.m. Friday and found the vehicle belonging to Samantha Waterbury, 24, and Dominic Koch, 24, west of Neillsville, according to a news release from the Clark County Sheriff’s Office. The two denied being in Fairchild and said there weren’t any drugs or weapons in the car.
Officials searched the vehicle and found 38.5 grams of crystal methamphetamine, 1.8 grams of marijuana and drug paraphernalia, the release stated. They also discovered eight cell phones, two iPads and a computer. Officials didn’t find the missing purse.
Waterbury faces charges of possession with intent to deliver, possession of THC and drug paraphernalia, and obstruction. Koch is charged with possession of methamphetamine, possession with intent to deliver narcotics and obstruction.
Waterbury is being held in Clark County jail on a $500 cash bond. Koch is being held under a probation hold and $20,000 cash bond.

What we can infer from Koch being on a “probation hold” is that he was already on probation for some unspecified previous crime, and you might think that getting caught with more than an ounce of meth would have been enough to put him behind bars for a while. An “eight-ball” of meth (3.5 grams, or one-eighth of an ounce) sells for about $50, so Koch had nearly $600 worth of meth on him when he was busted.

That’s second-degree possession, punishable by up to 25 years in prison. There’s a mandatory minimum sentence of three years, if the suspect has a prior drug felony. For whatever reason, however, Koch was back on the street pretty quickly, and he and a buddy were driving a stolen Jeep when Koch decided to go shoplifting at a Kohl’s department store in the Minneapolis suburb of Blaine, Minnesota:

A Wisconsin man and sole survivor of the duo who allegedly carjacked a man and his 9-year-old daughter on Sunday and fled police was charged Tuesday with first-degree aggravated robbery and fleeing police. Both are felony-level offenses.
Joseph William Heroff, 26, of Hammond, Wis., is being held at the Anoka County jail with bail set at $500,000. Dominic Lucas Koch, 27, of St. Croix Falls, Wis., died of multiple gunshot wounds after he was shot by police, according to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
In the criminal complaint, Heroff told police he and Koch had driven a white Jeep Compass to Kohl’s at 10311 Baltimore St. in Blaine on Sunday afternoon. While inside the store, Koch decided to shoplift.
Heroff told police he did not want to shoplift, so he went outside and waited in the car. A short time later, Koch came running out of the store with a cart full of merchandise, which he began shoving into the vehicle, the complaint said.
Heroff admitted to police that he was the driver at this point, according to the complaint. Officers quickly located the Jeep and attempted to stop it, but the vehicle fled through the Kohl’s parking lot into the adjacent Menards parking lot.
Officers caught up with them and maneuvered a squad to stop the vehicle. The two men then ran across a frozen drainage pond towards the Conquer Ninja Gym facility.
After reaching the parking lot, Heroff reported that Koch pulled out a gun and ordered a man and his 9-year-old daughter out of a pickup truck.
The father told police he and his daughter were waiting in the truck for a birthday party that was about to start at the gym when the men approached and they exited their vehicle, which the men then stole. They sped away.
The two fled north on Minnesota 65. The vehicle was disabled just north of Minnesota 107 near Braham and the men ran. Police said they pursued and gunfire was exchanged.
Koch was killed and Bravo, an Anoka police dog, was injured. He is recovering. Heroff was arrested and uninjured.

Good-bye and good riddance, criminal scum. Watch the video:

 

When I first watched that video, I had no idea who the suspects were. A carjacking in a Minneapolis suburb? So I had to Google it, and was honestly surprised when I saw the names and mugshots of the suspects. Two white meth freaks on a criminal rampage? Not what I’d expected, but it’s nice to be able to report a bit of “social justice” news:

COPS SHOOT WHITE CRIMINALS, TOO

You’ll never see that headline at CNN, though.




 

Liberal Idiot: ‘There Are Proven Strategies to Interrupt These Cycles of Violence’

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Perhaps you have forgotten the name Lisa Bender. Over the summer, the president of the Minneapolis City Council became a symbol of liberal idiocy, when she was interviewed on CNN saying that she could “imagine a police-free future.” Since then, not surprisingly, violent crime in Minneapolis has skyrocketed. The number of shootings in the city has doubled, and more than 100 officers have left the city’s police force.

No one who values their life would go near Minneapolis, and as the city circles the toilet bowl, Lisa Bender announced earlier this month that she will not seek re-election. James Lileks, who lives in Minneapolis but hasn’t been murdered yet, calls attention to an interview Bender gave to a Minneapolis journalist, in which she maintained her expertise:

For a number of years, the city has pursued developing a broader system of safety in Minneapolis. We’ve invested in community-based safety strategies, youth violence prevention, hospital-based violence prevention, group violence prevention. A couple of years ago, we directed staff to look at ways we could better serve the community by matching the right response to a call for help, looking through all the reasons why people call 911. Most of them are for non-violence-related incidents.
Violent crime makes up a very small percent of the total number of 911 calls. So that work has been ongoing. . . .
Unfortunately, 80% of gun-violence victims in Minneapolis are Black. Seventy percent of gun-violence victims are very young — ages 12 through 31. And there are proven strategies to interrupt these cycles of violence that are often group involved, that are relationship based.
A lot of the other incidents like car thefts and armed robberies are also related to groups that are known to the city, that are known to law enforcement. So for me the package looks like increasing accountability for law enforcement, investing in community-based safety strategies that we know work to prevent violence, investing in alternatives to policing so that we’re not relying on police to answer every single kind of call that’s coming into 911, so that we have a more holistic system of safety that’s working to keep people safe.

Do you get the idea that Lisa Bender thinks of certain phrases as if they were magical incantations? She speaks of “community-based safety strategies” as if merely saying these words will end the spree of carjackings and shootings that plague Minneapolis. Of course, she is corrected that their are “proven strategies to interrupt these cycles of violence” — you send the cops to arrest the perpetrators, prosecute them and ship them off to state prison for 10 or 20 years. That will “interrupt” their criminal career, but that’s probably not what she had in mind.

And whatever the “community-based safety strategies” might do, it will be too late to save the people already murdered in Minneapolis:

A 20-year-old man was fatally shot early Thursday in north Minneapolis, marking the city’s 78th homicide of the year.
Police found the man, later identified as Edward Mathew Thomas Hodges Jr., lying in the 2700 block of N. Dupont Avenue just before 3 a.m. after a ShotSpotter activation. A police spokesman said officers saw numerous people fleeing on foot. Hodges, who had been shot in the chest, died at the scene.
The Hennepin County Medical Examiner on Thursday also identified the man gunned down in his car earlier this week in the 3800 block of N. Girard Avenue early Tuesday as Frank L. Barber, 49, of Crystal.
The 78 homicides in 2020 make it the third-worst year for such deaths in Minneapolis. In all of 2019, there were 48 homicides. The highest number, 97, was recorded in 1995; the second-highest, 83, in 1996.

In case you didn’t do the math, that’s a 63% increase in the number of homicides, compared to 2019, and the year is not over yet.

Just a few more holistic victims of community-based murders.

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)




 

The Biden Agenda: ‘South Minneapolis Is Worse Than I’ve Ever Seen It’

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Kowalski’s Market is a grocery store chain in the Minneapolis area. Their store at 2440 Hennepin Avenue serves the so-called “Uptown” neighborhood southeast of downtown Minneapolis. Unfortunately for local shoppers, (a) liberals in Minneapolis decided to “defund” their police department and (b) Uptown is in Rep. Ilhan Omar’s congressional district. A column in the local newspaper tells about a woman named Elaine who was brutally robbed in the parking lot of Kowalski’s, and quotes the store’s security chief, Scott Nelson:

Committed to pursuing justice for Elaine, Nelson laments that we “need police service and we need more of it. South Minneapolis is worse than I’ve ever seen it.” He describes the surge of 20-plus attacks a day that are now striking people just going about their daily business, people like Elaine.
Usually in a stolen car, perpetrators Nelson describes as “young teens, 12-to-14 years old” cruise from lot to lot in neighborhood business districts, waiting for a victim, “like a deer hunter sits in a tree.”
When they are apprehended, Nelson says consequences are negligible. “I arrest the same people over and over. Nothing happens to them.”

Gonna take a wild guess that these marauding groups of teenage criminals probably aren’t Trump supporters, IYKWIMAITYD.

As I explained yesterday (“The Vision of the Anointed Returns”) a nationwide crime wave is likely to be one consequence of a Biden presidency. Democrats are anti-police and pro-criminal, and what is happening in Minneapolis is an example of where such a policy leads.

Earlier this month, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported that the city had experienced 76 carjackings or attempted carjackings in a span of seven weeks. That report followed an alert from the police department:

The Minneapolis 5th Police Precinct has issued a crime alert, with a map detailing 19 carjackings since Oct. 14; most of them have occurred in the Uptown area.
The crime alert stated, “The increase in street robberies, including carjacking incidents, has been persistent and very troubling this year.” The alert also said the perpetrators are generally teens or young adults and in some cases are wearing masks, making it difficult to identify them. . . .
According to police records, 12 of the carjacking and robbery victims have been women.

Who are these perpetrators? Last month, we learned the name of two of them after they were killed, along with a third perpetrator, when they wrecked a stolen car during a high-speed pursuit:

Three people died when the vehicle they were in rolled as they attempted to flee from police in Minneapolis early Monday morning.
According to the Minneapolis Police Department, officers saw the vehicle in the area of Dowling and Logan avenues at about 1:44 a.m. Officers recognized the vehicle as being a vehicle taken by force during a carjacking Sunday morning.
Officers attempted a traffic stop, but the driver drove away at a high rate of speed, according to police.
A pursuit took place and officers then saw the driver lose control of the vehicle in the area of Emerson and 18th avenues.
Police said the vehicle’s three occupants died as a result of the crash.
“I got a phone call at work at 4:00 a.m. this morning saying my son was gone,” Thomas Wright said.
Wright says his son Jamonte Welch, age 15, was inside the car, along with his nephew Demetrius Dobbins.
“My son, my nephew, the other little buddy, they were not bad kids. They just needed a little guidance,” he said.

Jamonte and Demetrius “just needed a little guidance,” you see. That’s probably a fair summary of the Biden agenda on crime. You get carjacked, and the perpetrators get “a little guidance,” assuming they’re not killed in a fiery crash. In this particular case, the young perpetrators stole a car after punching a 72-year-old woman in the face:

“They punched her and knocked her to the ground to get her purse. They took off in their car, got halfway down the alley, realized they had the keys to her car backed up and she was standing up by now they got back out, hopped in her car,” said [Theresa] Schlee.
Schlee says her aunt’s car is the one Minneapolis police were chasing through north Minneapolis early Monday morning, with three teenagers inside.
All three teenagers in the car died when they lost control and crashed. Schlee says her aunt had been in the area near Dowling Ave. N, taking care of a relative’s cat.
“That kind of blatant attack in the middle of the day to an elderly person who was there just feeding a cat, it’s like, that’s not right,” said Schlee. . . .
With the recent spike in carjackings in the Twin Cities, Schlee says she hopes this tragic situation makes people think twice before following suit.
“They look at this and not see, oh they’re just victims because the police chased after them. No, they suffered some awful consequences for some bad choices,” said Schlee.

You punch a 72-year-old woman in the face, don’t expect much sympathy when you die in a fiery crash in a stolen car. Except from Joe Biden, maybe, because Democrats support your criminal agenda.

There have been 358 carjackings in Minneapolis this year and, so far as we know, none of the perpetrators were Trump supporters.

Minneapolis is in Hennepin County, where Biden got 71% of the vote, with 532,623 votes to Trump’s 205,973 — a margin of 326,650 votes. Statewide, Biden carried Minnesota by a 233,012-vote margin, so that if you subtract Hennepin County from the statewide totals, Trump carried the rest of Minnesota by a margin of more than 90,000 votes.

Minneapolis voted for this crime wave. They deserve it. My advice to anyone who wants to survive is to get the hell out of Minneapolis.




 

Ilhan Omar Implicated in Election Fraud

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Has any “bombshell” story ever been less surprising?

A ballot-harvesting racket in Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Minneapolis district — where paid workers illegally gather absentee ballots from elderly Somali immigrants — appears to have been busted by undercover news organization Project Veritas.
One alleged ballot harvester, Liban Mohamed, the brother of Minneapolis city council member Jamal Osman, is shown in a bombshell Snapchat video rifling through piles of ballots strewn across his dashboard.
“Just today we got 300 for Jamal Osman,” says Mohamed, aka KingLiban1, in the video. “I have 300 ballots in my car right now . . .
“Numbers don’t lie. You can see my car is full. All these here are absentee ballots. . . . Look, all these are for Jamal Osman,” he says, displaying the white envelopes.
“Money is the king in this world . . . and a campaign is driven by money.”
The video, posted on July 1, was obtained by Project Veritas and included in a 17-minute video expose released Sunday night.
Under Minnesota law no individual can be the “designated agent” for more than three absentee voters. . . .
“Our investigation into this ballot harvesting ring demonstrates clearly how these unscrupulous operators exploit the elderly and immigrant communities” said James O’Keefe, founder and CEO of Project Veritas.
The alleged involvement of Ilhan Omar, a controversial member of the Squad, and frequent Trump target, is claimed on camera by two people in Veritas’ investigation, including whistleblower Omar Jamal, a Minneapolis community leader and chair of the city’s Somali Watchdog Group.
He claims Mohamed is “one of” Ilhan Omar’s “many people.”
“It’s an open secret. She will do anything that she can do to get elected and she has hundreds of people on the streets doing that,” he told Veritas in an on-camera interview last Tuesday.
“It’s not only her. It’s all this DFL [Democratic-Farmers-Labor] machine [that’s] in . . . the state of Minnesota . . .
“The regulations, if you ignore that and you let corruption and fraud become a daily business and then tough luck, the country will not exist as they [Americans] know it.” . . .

But don’t worry, we can trust Democrats counting the votes, right?




 

George Floyd Mug Shot

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That’s a photo from the Houston Police Department, where George Floyd was arrested in September 1998 on theft charges. Matt Berman was able to get multiple mug shots of Floyd from the Houston PD, which arrested Floyd on nine separate occasions between 1997 and 2009.

Why haven’t Americans seen these mug shots before? Berman explores this question, offering the most likely explanation: “Democrats are using this George Floyd incident to raise a lot of money, so they can’t risk having the general public begin thinking poorly of him.”

Saint George of the Blessed Fentanyl.




 

‘I Also Hope to Keep a Steady High’

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Worrying about politics is a waste of time, and nobody who knew me when I was in college could ever have imagined that I would grow up to become a political journalist, wasting my time this way.

My perspective on the political scene is idiosyncratic, simply because most people in this racket have been political junkies all their lives. They came to Washington right out of college, and wish nothing more than to be taken seriously as pundits, capable of prognosticating future outcomes. In contrast, I left college with the career goal of becoming a rock star, jammed in bands for a while, then stumbled into a newspaper career three years later, worked for years as a sports editor, and didn’t make it to D.C. until I was 38 years old, married with three kids.

It happened the other day (thank you, YouTube algorithm) that I started watching old videos of the jazz-rock band Chicago. Did you know that Chicago’s guitarist Terry Kath was Jimi Hendrix’s favorite guitarist? To listen to Kath play on “25 or 6 to 4” is to be amazed, and it’s a pity that Kath (who died tragically in 1978) is so seldom mentioned among the rock-and-roll greats. Kath could also sing like Ray Charles, a distinctive bluesy baritone, and as I watched videos of Chicago in early concerts, I remembered one of my old favorites of theirs, “Dialogue (Part I & II)” in which Kath trades lyrical lines with Peter Cetera:

Are you optimistic
About the way things are going?

No, I never ever think of it at all.

Don’t you ever worry
When you see what’s going down?

Well, I try to mind my business,
That is, no business at all.

When it’s time to function
As a feeling human being,
Will your Bachelor of Arts help you get by?

I hope to study further,
A few more years or so.
I also hope to keep a steady high

Such was my youthful attitude: “Don’t bum me out, man.”

You can perhaps see why I’ve always been mystified by these ultra-serious young “activist” types, crusading against social injustice all over the Internet when they’re not busy rioting in the streets. Far be it from me, a responsible father and grandfather, to encourage young people to pursue psychedelic hedonism as a way of life, but in some ways that would be preferable to becoming a “social justice warrior.”

These cynical ruminations were inspired not just by old Chicago songs, but also by the realization that the past three months of riots started because George Floyd overdosed on fentanyl.

 

Has any attempt to “keep a steady high” ever backfired so disastrously? Documents made public last week show the medical examiner found Floyd had “a fatal level of fentanyl under normal circumstances,” and bodycam videos show Floyd complaining “I can’t breathe” before the officers put him on the ground. In fact, the reason Floyd was on the ground was because he refused to let officers put him in the back of the police car, struggling and complaining of COVID and claustrophobia. Police, recognizing his “excited delirium” as evidence of a drug overdose, called an ambulance, then held him on the ground while they waited for the ambulance to arrive. There was no “systemic racism” involved, nor can the charges of murder against the officers be justified.

Well, I try to mind my business,
That is, no business at all.

Do you see the relevance here? The 1970s were a decade when there was a lot to be depressed or angry about, if you cared to pay attention to what was happening in the world. So not caring — complete cynicism — became a very widespread attitude. Just mind your own business and, like the song said, “try to keep a steady high.” Also, if you’re going to freak out on drugs, try not to do it on a city sidewalk after you’ve just been caught attempting to pass a counterfeit $20 bill.

Am I “optimistic about the way things are going”? Well, it is a hazard of my profession that I can’t simply ignore how things are going, and I hesitate to offer predictions, however . . .

How bad do things look for Joe Biden’s campaign right now? Consider this: Democrats are worried about Minnesota, a state no Republican presidential candidate has carried since Richard Nixon’s 1972 landslide. Yet polls show President Trump gaining ground in Minnesota, and Democrats are worried because they haven’t seen any appearances by Biden or his running mate Kamala Harris. “Why aren’t they here?” one Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party official told Minnesota Public Radio last week. “We need to hear from them. We need to see their presence on the ground.”
Biden’s peril in Minnesota is in many ways emblematic of everything that’s gone wrong for Democrats in this campaign. While the Real Clear Politics average of Minnesota polls still shows Biden leading Trump by more than five points, a poll by Emerson College earlier this month had Trump within three points, and a poll by the GOP-affiliated Trafalgar Group two weeks ago showed a tie in Minnesota. How could a state that twice gave majorities to Barack Obama, a state that not even Ronald Reagan could win in his 1984 landslide, be in play for Trump this year? Well, in a word, riots. . . .

Read the rest of my latest column at The American Spectator.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

Did I mention that Adam Schiff is blaming Russia for the riots?




 

Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes

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Matthew Lee Rupert is not exactly a criminal mastermind. His career of felonious stupidity began as a teenager, when he stole a van in his hometown of Galesburg, Illinois, and drove it into a ditch:

The van was found in a ditch just outside of Galesburg. Police found Rupert walking in the area where the van was located.
Police discovered footprints in the snow where the van had been parked and, after taking a picture of the bottom of Rupert’s shoes, found the tread to be a match.

That was 2009. Two years ago, Rupert was again facing felony charges:

A Galesburg man pleaded not guilty to charges of having stolen firearms.
Matthew L. Rupert, 24, entered that plea following his preliminary hearing Monday afternoon before Circuit Judge Raymond Cavanaugh. The judge had found probable cause during the evidentiary hearing and the case will progress to a pretrial hearing May 7.
Rupert is charged with felony counts of aggravated possession of stolen firearms, delivery of a stolen firearm, two counts of possession of a stolen firearm, possession of a firearm by a felon, possession of a firearm with defaced serial identification markings and theft.
Those same offenses, except charged under the accountability theory, have been filed against Amanda J. Cutler, 27, Bailey Avenue, as well.
While Rupert is out of custody after posting $7,500 bond, Cutler remains in jail. She went before Circuit Judge Scott Shipplett about two weeks ago for a bail reduction hearing that was ultimately denied.

You might think that charges as serious as these would have been enough to put Rupert behind bars for a long time, but this happened in Illinois, a state controlled by Democrats, which means that criminals are more or less allowed to roam free because . . . “social justice” or whatever.

Let’s pause, for a moment, to discuss #BlackLivesMatter and the consequences thereof. Everyone is against racism and police brutality, but this is not what #BlackLivesMatter is actually about. The real agenda is to help elect Democrats by demonizing police and inciting anti-white hatred, thus to “energize” black voters. This, in turn, is connected to promises of “criminal justice reform” which, in practical terms, means that criminals seldom face serious prison time. While this agenda is intended to pander to the black community, it results in a relaxation of law enforcement that also sets free many white felons, including dangerously stupid criminals like Matthew Lee Rupert:

A man from downstate Galesburg who allegedly appears on video rioting, looting and urging attacks against the police has been hit with what appears to be the first federal criminal charge related to the violence this weekend in Chicago.
Matthew Lee Rupert, 28, has been charged in an eight-page criminal complaint in federal court in Minnesota with civil disorder, carrying on a riot and possession of unregistered destructive devices. The complaint alleges Rupert participated in looting and rioting in Minneapolis in response to the police killing of George Floyd before moving on to Chicago.
In a removal hearing held by telephone Monday before U.S. District Chief Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer in Chicago, Rupert maintained his innocence through his attorney but didn’t challenge being taken in custody back to Minnesota. . . .
Allegations in the criminal complaint against Rupert largely revolve around a Facebook account for “El Ricco Rupert.” Rupert allegedly used that page to announce Thursday night that, “I’m going to Minneapolis tomorrow who coming only goons I’m renting hotel rooms.”
The next day, Rupert allegedly posted video to his Facebook account suggesting he was in Minneapolis. The video appeared to be filmed by Rupert while he was holding his cell phone, according to an FBI special agent’s affidavit. The video was marked “live” and lasted roughly two hours, records show. Authorities allege he passed out explosives, encouraged others to throw explosives at police and appeared to light a building on fire.
At one point, Rupert allegedly said, “There are SWAT trucks up there. They got SWAT trucks up there . . . I’ve got some bombs if some of you all want to throw them back . . . bomb them back . . . here I got some more . . . light it and throw it.” As he made the comments, Rupert allegedly handed out an item with brown casing and a green wick to others.
Rupert allegedly went on to break into a boarded-up liquor store, claimed to set a fire to a Sprint store and then took videos of himself taking items from an Office Depot.
The next day, Rupert allegedly suggested on Facebook he might head next to Chicago and he allegedly posted multiple videos early Sunday indicating he had arrived. He is allegedly seen with others near Van Buren and Dearborn wearing an American flag bandana and a white baseball cap. In one video, Rupert allegedly said he was at “South Plymouth and Ida B. Wells” waiting for his brother.
Rupert is allegedly heard on the video saying something to the effect of “let’s start a riot” and “I’m going to start doing some damage.” The feds say Rupert went into a merchant store but found the cash register empty, so he moved on to a convenience store. He allegedly is seen on video putting items in his backpack, and he references having boxes of tobacco products in his backpack.
Chicago police arrested Rupert and others at 2:21 a.m. Sunday for violating Chicago’s emergency curfew, according to the complaint. When police searched his vehicle, they found “several destructive devices” similar to what he had been using in Minneapolis, it states. He also had a hammer, a flashlight and cash.

Stupidity is not a federal crime, otherwise more Democrats would be in prison, but Rupert’s extreme stupidity — posting evidence of his terrorist spree on Facebook — is worthy of special consideration.


 

Anti-Trump Riot in Minneapolis

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Joel Pollak at Breitbart reports:

Left-wing rioters attacked supporters of President Donald Trump leaving a rally in Minneapolis, Minnesota on Thursday evening — assaulting them in groups, setting fire to pro-Trump hats, and attacking the police.
Riot police stood by as members of Antifa were seen dragging steel fences away from the Target Center. . . .
Local Minneapolis Star-Tribune reporter Liz Sawyer noted there were several hundred rioters, and that some were singling out Trump supporters and surrounding them in groups before attacking them. . . .
The Target Center had attempted to charge the Trump campaign hundreds of thousands of dollars for additional security. The rally itself — with a capacity crowd inside and tens of thousands outside — passed without serious incident, but local police seemed unprepared for the violence by anti-Trump rioters after the event was over.

Meanwhile, Gateway Pundit reports:

Far-left protesters reportedly made a bonfire with dozens of ‘Make America Great Again’ hats stolen off the heads of people who attended Thursday night’s Trump rally in Minnesota.
Blaze correspondent Elijah Schaffer reports that there were approximately 40 hats stolen and burned.
Schaffer tweeted that after burning the hats, “they then left the ashes as a vigil against fascism, leaving a f*ck Trump sign on the top of the pile This is tolerance. This is the left.”
The Minnesota rally was attended by 20,000 people, with an additional 25,000 supporters left gathering outside after the stadium was full.
Protesters also swarmed the area, destroying barricades and even waving the flag of communist China.
After the rally had concluded, Schaffer tweeted a warning that the area was no longer safe for Trump supporters.
“Trump supporters are literally fleeing the event after it ended as protestors are waiting around attacking attendees as they leave the arena It is not safe in Minneapolis any longer for Trump supporters. Please stay away from the vicinity and do not come out with branded gear,” Schaffer tweeted.