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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024

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+1 evidence for him being a Fed, and for the feds spying on everyone, all the time.

His sentencing was changed from in person to online, supposedly because he was going to be served in a lawsuit at the sentencing.

Epps is, of course, an agent of the intelligence apparatus.

What does online sentencing have to do with being a plant, exactly?

If I'm understanding correctly, the allegation is that the court is actively helping him avoid being served in a lawsuit regarding his actions on jan 6th.

As a lawyer who represents clients who get sued almost weekly, I can assure you that avoiding service isn't an effective strategy to defend a lawsuit. It's not like the case gets dismissed if they take too long or can't find you after three tries. What really happens is they document their attempts and go to court to get permission for alternative service which, depending on the jurisdiction, could amount to nothing more than running an ad in the paper. In the meantime, you've been turning your life upside down to avoid the process server, and you've been so successful that while you were hiding in your friend's basement you got legally served and didn't know it. In the meantime, the case has proceeded and resulted in a default judgment against you. Now you get to go to court yourself to try and convince the judge that there was a good reason you didn't get served and he should throw out the default judgment. If you're successful, the best case scenario is you get to go back to the position you would have been in had you just accepted service in the first place, excepting for all the money you spent on attorneys to get the default judgment overturned. I don't know how the idea that it's a good idea to avoid service became a thing.

It's not like the case gets dismissed if they take too long…

Are you sure on that? Usually it’s the complaint that controls time for statute of limitations purposes, but under federal rules plaintiffs only have 90 days to serve a defendant before they must show cause or have the complaint dismissed without prejudice. That lets them start over again, but it means starting over again.

For sophisticated plaintiffs going after unsophisticated targets, it doesn’t usually matter — you don’t let things get close to running the clock, and know exactly what is to dot to demonstrate necessary attempt of service — but I don’t think that’s the case here.

Right, so he's being sued by someone that doesn't even know how to attempt service? Or hire it out to a reputable one?

Because, as you say, if he's sued by anyone competent then they are gonna demonstrate that they made sufficient efforts.

sufficient efforts

Since "sufficient efforts" are whatever the court thinks they are, if the court wants to decide that things which would normally be sufficient aren't in this case and just dismiss for lack of service, they will.

Oh. I suppose the plaintiffs must be powerless to serve him at his home or definitely-not-federal job, then.

Is he there?

Maybe? On one hand, he was allegedly living off the grid after receiving enough death threats. On the other, 60 minutes had that location.

yes, but I would imagine the difficulty of finding him would ramp up in inverse correlation with the notoriety of the person doing the searching. Not unlike someone ducking loan collectors but being readily available to go to the pub with friends.