As 5 Patriot Front Members Released From Prison, Group Leader Thomas Rousseau Takes Aim At “Biased Small Town Prosecutor” In Video
This isn’t going to turn out good for the City of Coeur d’Alene…
(Coeur d’Alene, Idaho) — 5 members of the group Patriot Front were released from jail on Sunday afternoon, after being found guilty of “conspiracy to riot” during a jury trial last week.
This is just the first 5 of 31 members of the group who were arrested in Coeur d’Alene, while being transported in the back of a U-Haul truck to protest a “Pride in the Park” event in June 2022.
The “Pride” event was planned by the North Idaho Pride Alliance, Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, and the Human Rights Education Institute in Coeur d’Alene, among many others.
According to a whistleblower report given to the Idaho Tribune last week, and according to court documents, it seems as though there are several “irregularities” that occurred with the arrest of the members of Patriot Front, as well as the collection of evidence that was presented to the jury in an effort to get a conviction.
We have previously reported on how the groups cell phones were given to the FBI by Coeur d’Alene Police, pursuant to a Federal Warrant that has not yet been seen by the Police, the defendants, the Judges in the case, and has not been entered into any court records.
The group’s leader, Thomas Rousseau, has alleged in a motion that those phones contain exculpatory evidence showing a “dress rehearsal from the day before” as well as body cam recordings from the day of the arrest.
The Judge granted Rousseau’s motion to compel.
In a video posted on the groups’ social media account 5 days after their arrest, some of that bodycam video is shown. According to notes taken by Casey Whalen during the trial, that footage was admitted into evidence, but not shown to the jury. We are including it here, so you can watch for yourself:
In the video, a member of the group, presumably a leader, says “keep in mind that being in the center of a park at an event like this with weak willed opposition that will be heckling at most.” The unidentified Patriot Front member continued, saying:
“There’s not going to be any opportunity for getting testy with physical responses, so mind your P’s and Q’s. Purely defensive. Remember guys, most importantly - remain calm at all times. Stay collected. […] We make more of an impactful response by our discipline and silence than by epithets.”
Far from giving the impression that they came to engage in physical violence, this video appears to show that the shields were to be used defensively, if they were attacked for exercising their freedom of speech.
As we know from past experience in Coeur d’Alene, leftists here are, in fact quite violent. in one instance assaulting a citizen at a North Idaho College (NIC) board meeting, and more recently, tracking down a NIC Trustee at his place of work and violently assaulting him with a bucket full of cleaning chemicals.
The most interesting thing about the video posted above is the comment made by a Coeur d’Alene police officer, just seconds before the rear door of the U-Haul truck was opened.
“You picked the wrong time to riot.”
According to Police testimony in court, the Coeur d’Alene Police had no information about Patriot Front coming to the Pride in the Park event prior to their arrest, but had instead been warned, and were “concerned” about the presence of Antifa.
So, how is it possible that just seconds after the U-Haul truck was pulled over, before the police ever saw the shields and flagpoles that were allegedly to be used by Patriot Front, the police had already made the determination that Patriot Front came to cause a riot?
There were other groups at the park that day armed with flagpoles:
As a matter of fact, Antifa was armed with more than just flagpoles:
So, while an Antifa protestor was allowed to walk away, guns and all by the Coeur d’Alene Police, they arrested a Christian pastor for preaching the Gospel, as other Antifa members watched on with glee.
Two Tired Justice System
Everyone in North Idaho has noticed that the radical Left-Wing activists have been given a pass up here, while conservatives, Christians, and Right-Wingers have generally been punished to the fullest extent of the law.
There’s a reason for that. Primarily, due to the fact that the Kootenai County Human Rights Task Force and the Human Rights Education Institute were established to persecute conservatives who are against “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.”
These groups grew out of an organization called the “Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment” which was established by Bill Wassmuth, a former priest who turned his back on the Church and deserted his priesthood in an attempt to become a “civil rights hero.”
The coalition eventually fizzled out, because as we have noted before, the demand for “white supremacy” far outstrips the supply. There just isn’t enough hate to spark donations.
Wassmuth’s network of non-profit “anti-hate” organizations began to fizzle out after partnering with the thoroughly discredited Southern Poverty Law Center, which was headed at the time by Morris Dees.
Dees’ picture, and links to the SPLC are still prominently displayed on the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations’ website.
According to an article by former SPLC Employee Bob Moser that appeared in the New Yorker:
“We were part of the con, and we knew it.
“Outside of work, we spent a lot of time drinking and dishing in Montgomery bars and restaurants about the oppressive security regime, the hyperbolic fund-raising appeals, and the fact that, though the center claimed to be effective in fighting extremism, “hate” always continued to be on the rise, more dangerous than ever, with each year’s report on hate groups. ‘The S.P.L.C.—making hate pay,’ we’d say.”
This was ultimately a group of con artists, and donations fizzled out.
In 2003, the Spokesman Review ran an article titled Civil Rights Coalition Near Death, but far from dying, it instead appears that the offspring of that coalition have gone on to occupy some of the highest levels of law enforcement in the Pacific Northwest.
Most notably would be U.S. Attorney Josh Hurwit, the Federal prosecutor appointed by Merrick Garland to the State of Idaho.
Traci Whelan, a deputy U.S. Attorney and the head of the Department of Justice’s office in Coeur d’Alene, is also involved with this group of “anti-hate” NGO’s.
Whelan, or someone in her office would have signed off on the warrant to search the phones of the detained Patriot Front members in June of 2022, which seems like a conflict of interest considering her involvement with the Task Force on Human Relations.
As a brief reminder, this is the same group of people who filed the complaint with the NWCCU to get North Idaho College’s accreditation pulled, after conservatives took over the majority of the board.
Now that we know a little more of the history of these so-called “human rights” groups, doesn’t it seem again like a conflict of interest that Coeur d’Alene Police Captain David Hagar was one of the witnesses called to give testimony at the trial?
According to FOIA documents obtained by Casey Whalen, Captain Hagar was actually on a committee that was in charge of “marketing” the Pride event, and was included in an email thread just days before the arrest.
Whatever you think of Patriot Front and their ideology, associations, or connections is irrelevant at this point.
What is important is to understand that this group of Left-Wing activists are in control of the local government in Coeur d’Alene, and they are using their networks and positions of power to, as Christie Wood said, send a “message of zero tolerance” to Right-Wing groups that have a problem with the sexualization of children at Pride events.
Patriot Front’s Response
On Telegram, Thomas Rousseau, the leader of the Patriot Front group, shot back at the corrupt North Idaho establishment in a video released while the 5 members of Patriot Front were still in prison.
In the video, Rousseau calls Coeur d’Alene’s City Prosecutor, Wes Somerton “a biased small town prosecutor with an axe to grind.”
Coeur d’Alene City Prosecutor Wes Somerton
Rousseau continued saying that:
“Many circumstances have conspired against us thus far in these cases so that the truth is set to a lesser advantage than it will be moving forward. We believe firmly that the jury did their best to assess the situation, but such upstanding individuals can only deliberate on information of available to them. We are working hard to ensure that a full presentation of the facts relaying our innocence shines through beyond any reasonable doubt and uplifts our peaceful intentions from reasonable conclusion to incontestable fact.”
Considering that the Judge in Rousseau’s case has acknowledged that there are “Brady materials” on the cell phones that are currently in the possession of the FBI, while also considering that the FBI has acknowledged that there is “Brady materials” on those phones, and further considering the “totality of evidence in this case” that we have outlined in our previous article, it is entirely possible that in the end, Patriot Front will be found “not guilty.”
If that is the case, people need to be asking why the City of Coeur d’Alene was willing to shell out HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of dollars to “protect” these Gay Pride events.
Police Presence at Pride in the Park 2023
People need to be asking why the City of Coeur d’Alene is forcing the taxpayers of Kootenai County to foot MILLIONS of dollars to have these trials.
People need to be asking why prosecutors both at the local and Federal levels, who are in bed with these corrupt, anti-constitutional NGO’s are ONLY prosecuting Right-Wing, conservatives, while ignoring rampant Left-Wing violence and corruption in our town.
People might even be asking why the City of Coeur d’Alene is paying out MILLIONS of dollars in damages to members of the Patriot Front.
While Coeur d’Alene prosecutes a group of people that have no documented history of rioting or inciting violence, New York City is getting ready to pay out $13 million dollars to Black Lives Matter activists that turned America’s once prestigious cities into a war-zone in 2020.
