Category Archives: Corey Hurren

Corey Hurren

Corey Hurren Sentencing Hearing 1.0

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Corey Hurren, the Manitoba QAnon fancier who drove for 28 hours to get to Ottawa, then rammed his truck through the gate at Rideau Hall, picked up three loaded long guns, and set off in pursuit of the Prime Minister, but then surrendered to the RCMP, had his sentencing hearing today in Ottawa. Reporters were permitted to connect to the Zoom call, while Hurren, defence counsel Michael Davies, and Assistant Crown Attorney Meaghan Cunningham were physically present in Courtroom 7, traditionally the home of sentencing for guilty pleas.

Less than an hour before Hurren drove his truck through the gates of Rideau Hall, a social media account for his business posted a meme that blames the global elite for COVID-19.

Al Jazeera

That post was an invitation to a post-pandemic party and suggestion they look up “Event 201,” Event 201 was a pandemic preparedness exercise, and QAnon supporters have claimed that it’s proof that Microsoft founder Bill Gates is behind a bio-terrorist plan using Covid-19.

A comment from Douglas Thew on that post now reads: “Methinks your “lockdown” is going to last a little longer than the rest of ours…” Which, arguable at this point. Unproven thesis.

He originally faced 21 weapons charges and one of threatening the prime minister, who was not home at the time.

Earlier this month, he pleaded guilty to seven weapons charges related to possession of prohibited or restricted firearms “for a purpose contrary to the public peace.”

He also pleaded guilty to one charge of mischief by wilfully causing $100,000 worth of damage to the Rideau Hall gate.

CTV via CanadianPress

Hurren’s original charges, all 22 of them, had been filed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Integrated National Security Enforcement Team, or INSET, which is a counterterrorism unit. Over the course of almost a year of discussions, fourteen of the charges including the threat to Trudeau disappeared, leaving just seven weapons charges and the “mischief” for ramming his truck through the (quite substantial) iron gate.

From July 3, the day after the attack:

The original headline on that article referred to a “Friendly sausage-maker” ie the suspect in custody
Originally I agreed that Hurren’s armed-to-the-teeth and highly forcible incursion onto the grounds of Rideau Hall was an assassination attempt, I no longer believe it. I think clinically depressed Corey Hurren, out of work, with a failed business and a failing marriage, and with the guns in which he placed his own value as a man being newly-restricted by government, wanted to die. He wanted suicide by cop. And, when face to face with the officers on whom he was placing that burden, he simply couldn’t do it. He could not turn them into killers. Speculation, yes, possums, but That Note read enough like a suicide note that his own friends called the RCMP about it. This, by the way, is bog-standard QAnon procedure: you get them all fired up and apocalyptic, and then you just tell them to bring their guns and you let them wing it. That’s why Corey Hurren failed. That’s why the January 6 Insurrection failed. Not because anarchy fails, but because anarchy and fascism are opposites. If you’re a dutiful order-taker you’re the opposite of a lone wolf, regardless of what your favourite subreddit tells you.

After a slight, apparently Zoom-tech-related delay, the hearing got underway. Yes, we’ve been in a pandemic for a year now and everywhere should be pretty fluent in Zooming, but we’re talking about a government institution that still accepts faxes. We’re lucky they don’t still mandate wigs. Before we start, I find it interesting to note that the prosecutor, ie the Crown Attorney in Canadian Parlance, has given public presentations on trauma-informed prosecutions.

Here are my livetweets. Editorial comments will be added in later in italics.

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