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On June 11, 2022, MAGA nutjobs thought the two most important events of the day both related to Coeur d’Alene’s Pride in the Park. The first event was the arrest of 31 queer-hating white supremacists who armed themselves and piled into the back of a U-Haul truck to go bash the families trying to enjoy your average annual small-town Pride celebration. The second was a drag queen exposing his genitals on stage during a performance for an audience that included kids and families.
For everyone not a MAGA nutjob, the important stories were numbered a bit differently as that second thing never happened. Yes, Eric Posey took a couple turns performing as Mona Liza Million right there in Coeur d’Alene. But the Associated Press tells us he wore “shorts and tights, with a shiny metallic boa around his waist. He did not remove clothing.”
Facts, of course, have never gotten in the way of right-wing screaming fits, especially when there is money to be made or likes to be collected. And so, says the Coeur D’Alene Press, the decidedly hinged Summer Bushnell
posted a video of herself discussing the mass arrest of Patriot Front members near City Park, as well as footage from Posey’s performance.
“Why did no one arrest the man in a dress who flashed his genitalia to minors and people in the crowd?” she said in the video. “No one said anything about it and there’s video. I’m going to put up a blurred video to prove it.”
That went up on Saturday, June 11. On the 12th, Bushnell followed it up with a video of Million’s performance
which included a blur over Posey’s pelvis. Bushnell told others that the blur concealed “fully exposed genitals” and urged people to contact police.
As Bushnell expected and surely craved, her post immediately received national attention and provoked widespread testeria. LibsofTikTok, Gays Against Groomers, and Infowars were just some of those who slobbered over Bushnell’s lies.
Local news quickly broadcast the unedited video (sent to them by Bushnell herself in at least one case). Despite the obvious and rapid debunking, police investigated just as Nightmare Lady asked. Like every other sane observer, they found that when they watched the unedited video, Million’s body remained covered the entire time. Prosecutors rightly declined to prosecute, but their statement exonerating Posey/Million came too late for the performer to escape threats, harassment, and worse.
There wasn’t much to do except sue Bushnell POW, RIGHT IN THE KISSER, and that he did, filing at the end of September 2022 but not reaching trial until just last week.
“Imagine being in a dark hole where you have nobody and you felt the whole world turn their back on you,” Posey described the impact of Bushnell’s attack in his testimony. And no wonder. A man who clearly loves performing in drag, had edited pictures of himself used as weapons in a hideous movement to ban the art form from entire states. Fortunately, the melon-fucking Bluetooth assgadgets who targeted him were not the only people sending messages. He was also, he said,
surrounded by warriors, true people of Idaho — not transplants, true people of this soil. I am fortunate to say I have people like that around me, people that lifted me up.
(Note the plural, which appears to logically imply more cool people live in Idaho than just Posey and yr Doktor Zoom. And Rebecca says she knows at least a dozen of you who came to more than one Wonk party!)
For the defamation Bushnell maliciously initiated and the injuries that resulted, the jury — yes, in Idaho — on Friday found Bushnell liable for damages to the tune of $926,000, and topped that off with another $250k punitive for knowing her statements were false when she made them, or for making them with reckless disregard for the truth. (We’ll go with option one.) Yes, Mona Liza Million should be getting a million plus.
Somehow Bushnell’s lawyer maintained that “his client’s allegations were ‘close to the line’ but did not cross the line into defamation.” Yr Wonkette finds that a little confusing in a defamation per se state where allegations of criminal activity and accusations of moral turpitude jump one right to the other side of that line, but even evil, lying moral scolds like Bushnell are entitled to an attorney and that attorney has to say something to earn his pay check, we guess.
As for that other event on June 11, 2022, well, nearly everyone arrested was convicted either after trial or by guilty plea. The punishments were generally quite minor — several got five days of jail with credit for the two days served at the time of arrest and booking. And when it came to the ringleader, he got off scot free.
The explanations range from FBI intransigence making communication difficult and evidentiary disclosures late to the predictable logistics of a large case with many defendants being handled by a small city prosecutor’s office.
The city prosecutors handling the cases had to pinball between the courts of nine judges. Scheduling alone was a nightmare: One week, there were two different Patriot Front trials scheduled before two different judges in two different courtrooms, involving the same witnesses.
Ultimately 27 were convicted. Prosecutors were undefeated when they were able to bring their cases before juries. And though several cases were dismissed, the trash pile of white supremacists did not get their chance to break up Pride, and Bushnell still owes Posey one million dollars.
The decent people won this round.
H/T to Uncle Travelling Matt, your non-comment friend and another cool person living in Idaho, for this story.
