Did you have a mock trial program in high school? It’s pretty fun: You’re given a case with a full set of facts and are required to serve either as the side of the prosecution or defense against another team. It’s a good way to kill a semester’s elective requirement, but it is in no way worth paying $2,500 to participate in.
Yet that is the admission fee to get into a newly created fantasy land dubbed America’s Grand Jury. This is mock trial on steroids — or maybe hallucinogenics. Hosted by a motley crew of right-wing weirdos and anti-vaxxers, the event will convene a grand jury that will seek to convict Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, of crimes against humanity.
First reported on by The Daily Beast, America’s Grand Jury appears to be an attempt to force upon us an alternate timeline wherein QAnon conspiracies are reality. According to the organization’s website, it plans to try Fauci for the “deaths of millions of people all over the globe.” To convict him, they’ll call upon anti-vax grifters Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Robert Malone. Who will be defending Fauci? Uh ... no one, it seems. Interesting choice for an event that describes itself as “the fair and balanced way to decide if Anthony Fauci should be indicted.”
Participants will be able to sign up to “become a grand juror” for as little as $25, which grants them the right to participate in “polling and voting” online. But if you actually want to sit in on the trial like a real juror, you’ll need to buy the VIP plan. That starts at $2,500 and runs as high as $10,000, which gets you a five-night stay in Nashville, Tennessee, and the ability to hang out with the prosecution team and witnesses — you know, just like how a grand jury works!
The event appears to be the work of the Unity Project, according to The Daily Beast. If that sounds vaguely familiar to you, it’s because it’s the same group that supported the trucker convoy that traveled to Washington, D.C., and accomplished nothing but mild traffic jams. Three of the members on the board of the Unity Project — Malone, Paul Alexander, and Peter McCullough — are scheduled to appear as witnesses in the mock trial, which kinda makes you think it’s all a grift to line their pockets and boost their profile.
Assuming this thing goes well for them, there are more fake trials lined up. Hunter Biden and Hillary Clinton are next on the docket, according to the organization’s website. Surely those trials, too, will end in conviction, and everyone involved will get to pat themselves on the back for accomplishing nothing while imagining that their political opponents are behind bars.
Honestly, it’s great grift. It’s hard to get people to want to participate in jury duty, and here these folks are getting people to pay to do just that. Stay tuned for their next project, America’s DMV Line, where people will pay for the privilege of standing in line to renew their licenses, in some sort of incoherent attempt to prove voter ID laws are totally necessary and not at all discriminatory.
