South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)

Capitol rioters undone by addiction to social media.

- Fred Grimm Fred Grimm, a longtime resident of Fort Lauderdale, has worked as a journalist in South Florida since 1976. Reach him by email at leogrimm@gmail.com or on Twitter: @ grimm_fred

They’ve been the most accommodat­ing of criminals. They posed for selfies at the crime scene. They posted videos of themselves attacking outnumbere­d cops. They proudly shared images as they invaded, looted and vandalized America’s most revered edifice. Then they took to Facebook to revel in their

15 minutes of infamy.

The Jan. 6 insurrecti­onists were undone by the compulsion that besets all manner of

21st Century endeavors. Like everyone else in our self-obsessed culture, they celebrated themselves. On social media.

As if they thought the FBI couldn’t find evidence of sedition among all those cat videos.

The thugs just couldn’t resist dazzling their social media friends with their criminal exploits. No doubt, the cops were dazzled by their stupidity.

Felipe Marquez, 25, of Coral Springs, posted videos on Snapchat of his particular folly, puffing on a vaping pen as he and his fellows breached the Capitol and rummaged through Senate offices.

Facebook Live was the preferred medium for Gabriel Augustin Garcia, 40, of Miami, a member of a local Proud Boys chapter, who posted videos of himself among the rioters proclaimin­g, “We just went ahead and stormed the Capitol. It’s about to get ugly.”

Ugly would include the murder of a Capitol Police officer.

A friend of Samuel Camargo, 26, of Deerfield Beach, alerted the FBI that his Instagram account included a cache of self-incriminat­ing postings. Camargo, who was busted Wednesday, has written an apology on Facebook for his riotous behavior, adding, wisely, “I will be getting off all social media for the foreseeabl­e future and will cooperate with all investigat­ions that may arise from my involvemen­t.”

In the days before the insurrecti­on, Joseph Randall Biggs, 37, of Ormond Beach, a biggie in Florida’s Proud Boys hierarchy, encouraged like-minded radicals to join the insurrecti­on via Parler, the far right’s favorite social media website (until Amazon stopped providing web services). Biggs had promised his Parler gang: “January 6 is gonna be epic.”

Epic it was. Biggs was arrested Wednesday thanks to incontrove­rtible evidence of his criminalit­y roiling through social media.

Michael Curzio of Summerfiel­d, Florida, posted his inside videos of the Capitol invasion that same day on Facebook. The next day, the ex-con with an attempted murder conviction on his rap sheet updated his status to declare, “Our point was made yesterday, I have no regrets for anything.”

One can almost hear the groan from his defense attorney.

Certainly, photos reverberat­ing across the Internet showing Adam Johnson of Parrish, Florida, lugging Nancy Pelosi’s lectern through the Capitol’s hallways, left his lawyer flummoxed. Dan Eckhart told reporters that defending Johnson “would be a problem.” He admitted, “I’m not a magician, so yeah, we’ve got a photograph of our client in what appears to be inside a federal building or inside the Capitol with federal property.’’

The feds have rounded up more than 100 rioters (at least nine from Florida) whose defense attorneys are similarly faced with photos of their clients rampaging through the Capitol and with their social media declaratio­ns bragging about the Capitol incursion.

Imagine explaining this TikTok post to a jury: “Listen guys, they only got so much mace. And we got all these Patriots. We’re not running out. They’re going to run out.”

Or another on Facebook: “It was awesome. It was dangerous and violent. People died, but it was f—-ing great if you ask me. Seeing cops literally run . . . was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

The feds are reportedly sorting through more than 200,000 photos and videos, many of which had been posted on social media by the rioters themselves with captions like, “Live [from] inside the Congress building. It was worth the tear gas.”

Probably because extremists tend to keep to their own social media bubbles, their warped notions echo back and forth until their crazed ravings can sound like a national consensus. On Jan. 6, they expected Americans would join them en masse to forcibly undo a democratic election. Instead, their neighbors were calling the FBI to report incriminat­ing Facebook posts.

Such naive saps — Trump’s chumps — who thought an empathy-challenged Palm Beach billionair­e would protect them from criminal prosecutio­n. They thought they were doing his bidding when they stormed the Capitol, but when the outgoing president doled out pardons to his rich-guy cronies Wednesday, none of his “stop the steal” rioters made the cut.

Instead, they’re faced with criminal charges bolstered by evidence drawn from their own social media compulsion­s. Next up: prison-cell selfies. How can they resist?

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