Meet Gracyn Courtright of West Virginia, who became infamous by saying, ““Infamy is just as good as fame.”
Your “Stupid Alert” flag should already be popping up. But be patient, there’s more.
The first thing she does, once inside the Capitol amidst a mob of rioters, is look for someplace to plug in her cellphone charger. “Courtright later told investigators that” while looking for a place to charge her phone, “she didn’t realize … that she was on the Senate floor.”
However, in a riot, any electrical outlet will do. So, there she was, “focused on turning her phone on,” and she “did not pay attention to what was going on around her,” namely a riot.
“She did remember seeing a circle of law enforcement officers, people chanting, people trying to break things, and others telling them not to break things,” prosecutors said. And wondered what was that all about? You see, Courtwright, a college student, only went to Washington D.C. to watch history being made.
As her lawyer explains, “Ms. Courtright did not set out from her small hometown of Hurricane, West Virginia to subvert democracy. She came to see former President Trump speak at the rally which was supposed to be his last. She thought it would be an historical event.” To underline her disengagement from the whole “stolen election” business, he casually threw in, “She didn’t even vote in the election.”
Anybody who thought that would be Trump’s last rally, after which he’d quietly go away, is terminally stupid.
Anyway, back to the Senate floor, where she somehow ended up carting around the Senate’s “Members Only” sign, and mugging with it for the cameras, evidently oblivious to the fact she’s not a member of the U.S. Senate. We’re talking breathtaking unawareness, folks.
As her lawyer (again) explained, when the “reality of the situation set in and she was back home with her family in West Virginia, she was totally embarrassed by her actions and was full of remorse.” Perhaps not least because, “Her parents were furious with her.” Yes, people, it took that long for some lightbulb, however dim, to turn on.
Noting that his client had posted on social media, among other things, that “she couldn’t wait to ‘tell my grandkids’ she was at the Capitol on Jan. 6,” her lawyer wrote in his presentencing memo to the court (she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor of unlawful entry), “The postings on social media are not disputed. They are what they are. They are troubling but …. What they truly reflect is her lack of understanding of what occurred on that day.”
Yes, this is obvious.
Of the 1,200 or so individuals who stormed the Capitol that day, she’s in a category by herself. If you’re a lawyer with a client like this, what you do is the only thing you can do. You adopt a fatherly posture and firmly explain her only option is to plead guilty, throw herself on the mercy of the court, and keep quiet while you try to convince the judge she’s too stupid to be responsible for her actions.
In this case, there’s a lot to work with:
Exhibit A: Her bragging about becoming “infamous.” (She succeeded, wildly, by the way.) Exhibit B: Trying to charge a phone in the middle of a riot. Exhibit C: Not wondering why the cops are there. Exhibit D: Thinking her grandkids would be proud of her getting mixed up in this. (N.B., even though it’s a proven biological fact that earthworms and fleas can figure out how to reproduce, I’m not so sure this young lady will get past the steps necessary to have grandchildren.)
There are risks to this type of legal defense, though. The judge might not believe anyone could possibly be that stupid. I do, though, and I don’t need persuading by her lawyer. Her words and actions convinced me.
