Carlos Zapata in RWB Episode 6.5.
If you can’t win in a court of law, retry the case in the court of public opinion, where the rules of evidence aren’t as strict.
That’s the plot of Red, White and Blueprint Episode 6.5, in which RWB co-producer Carlos Zapata and his defense attorney Joseph Tully retry Zapata on charges of battery and disturbing the peace resulting from his altercation with Nathan Pinkney last April.
Naturally, they find Zapata 100 percent innocent.
A News Café obtained a copy of the latest RWB episode in advance of its premier on YouTube at 7 p.m. Friday. During the short 20-minute episode, evidence is invented, a conspiracy is presented, and blame is dispensed, all in order to prove Zapata didn’t do it.
For example, there’s a bias against supposedly violent Trump supporters like Zapata, Tully claims. Jurors pick on defendants like the participants with their hands on the buzzers in the Milgram shock experiments. Even A News Café is found at fault!
“A News Café is basically an anti-Carlos Zapata website,” Tully says.
Ouch!
(I won’t mention that his client, who was under gag order during the trial, contacted me via Messenger and thanked me for writing what he thought was a fair piece on that day’s proceedings.)
“I don’t ever want to see a client convicted for something they didn’t do,” says a solemn Tully as the episode begins. “It doesn’t matter how big or little the charge is, and it makes me scared to death now knowing that a jury can convict where a client is innocent. That should never happen.”
Well, I guess we can’t all have Kyle Rittenhouse as a client.
Defense attorney Joseph Tully.
The fact of the matter is, in October Zapata was convicted by a jury of his peers for disturbing the peace for his part in the Pinkney assault, a misdemeanor that earned him a year on probation and mandatory anger management counseling.
In RWB Episode 6.5, Zapata seeks to overturn that verdict, at least in the public’s imagination, by introducing supposed evidence that was not admitted in court, in large part because Zapata declined to testify.
As images from security surveillance cams from the night of the incident play across the screen and bluesy film noire guitars set the mood, Zapata claims Pinkney encountered Chris Meagher and Elizabeth Bailey inside the 1724 Downtown Bar & Grill, which is across the street from the Market Street Blade & Barrel where Pinkney worked.
The scenes take place in the moments after Zapata threw/spilled/splashed a drink on Pinkney, who was on duty as a sous chef at the Blade & Barrel that night. Pinkney was standing behind the bar when an argument broke out between him and Zapata, who was sitting across from him at the bar with his wife.
Zapata was upset that Pinkney, who goes by the online handle Nathan Blaze, was satirizing the RWB docuseries on social media, including a spot-on parody of the gruff-talking Zapata himself. Zapata had previously issued online warnings to his critics.
“I was embarrassed Nathan had come out [of the kitchen] and escalated,” Zapata says in the RW&B docuseries about their meeting at the Blade and Barrel. “He brought it into real life by coming and standing in front of me.”
Keep in mind, it was Zapata who came to Pinkney’s place of work, not vice versa.
While Tully puts great emphasis on the four witnesses who characterized the drink spill as an accident, Zapata admitted he batted the glass at Pinkney on purpose on an RWB podcast that was viewed by the jury during the trial.
Apparently, the jury, which acquitted Zapata on the battery charge, didn’t believe him.
After the drink incident, Pinkney and co-worker Kenneth Cornelius can be seen outside the 1724 on the security cameras, but they never enter the bar. Nevertheless, Zapata claims Bailey contacted him about an alleged encounter inside the bar as he and his wife were driving home.
“Hey Chris and I are over at the 1724 and Nathan just came over here looking for you,” Zapata recalls her saying. “Nathan came over here looking for you and I think his words were something along the lines of where’s your little bitch Carlos.”
She told Carlos that Nathan said “fuck you” to her, and Meagher was upset about it.
“Those aren’t free words,” says Zapata. “You’re not going to say ‘fuck you’ to my wife and not get punched in the mouth.”
Whether Zapata has been attending his mandated anger management sessions is unknown at this time.
At any rate, Bailey told Zapata that Meagher was going after Pinkney, so Zapata turned the car around and came back to the Blade & Barrel.
On the security video, Zapata, Meagher and Bailey can clearly be seen in the parking lot, converging upon Pinkney and Cornelius as they make for the restaurant’s backdoor. There’s no audio, but Zapata unconvincingly alleges Cornelius was trying to lure the trio into the restaurant for a close-quarters brawl, perhaps featuring meat cleavers and knives.
Zapata claims he attempted to stop the fight from happening.
“We’re not doing this, this is not really happening,” Zapata said he remembers saying.
Given the stark footage featuring Bailey grabbing Pinkney’s shirt so he can’t escape into the restaurant and Meagher punching Pinkney in the head, it’s doubtful the jury would have taken Zapata’s word on his alleged peacekeeping role.
Perhaps that’s why he didn’t testify.
Carlos Zapata on the day he was sentenced for disturbing the peace by fighting.
Zapata first gained local and national notoriety after his vitriolic, militant rant against COVID-19 lockdowns and mask mandates at a Shasta County Board of supervisors meeting in August 2020.
Earlier this year, Zapata formed RWB with Bethel-connected music producer Jeremy Edwardson and local grow-store owner Jon Knight, who was present at the Washington, D.C., insurrection on Jan. 6.
The video and podcast production company serves as the propaganda arm for the Shasta County recall movement, which includes the Shasta County General Purpose Committee/Recall Shasta.
All three organizations are being investigated by the California Fair Political Practices Commission for potential campaign finance violations.
The recall movement originally sought to recall three members of the Shasta County Board of Supervisors because they allegedly kowtowed to Gov. Gavin Newsom on COVID-19 protocols. It succeeded in gathering enough signatures to recall one, District 2 Supervisor Leonard Moty, who’s held the seat since 2008.
Moty faces a COVID-weary electorate and five challengers in the recall election scheduled for Feb. 1, 2022.
Not coincidentally, the RWB docuseries has focused almost exclusively on Moty for both real and imagined transgressions in its first six episodes.
It’s true that Moty was censured by the board of supervisors for crossing emergency police and fire lines during the 2018 Carr Fire to gas up his home generator, as covered by one RWB episode.
It’s not true that Moty, when he still served as Redding Police Chief in 2007, was fired in a secret city council meeting, as alleged by District 4 Supervisor Patrick Jones in RWB Episode 5.
It’s false that Moty has formed a secret pact to collect taxes from illegal marijuana cultivators, as alleged in another RWB episode via an anonymous deep throat style “all roads lead to Moty” phone message.
In RWB Episode 6.5, the theatrical device aimed at Moty is an anonymous letter apparently slipped under Zapata’s front door. Zapata reads the letter aloud:
“You need to know board of supervisor Leonard Moty called Chief Schueller and had him investigate the assault incident. [Nathan] Blaze never contacted the police. [Redding Police] Chief Schueller then had Capt. Poletski organize a team of investigators to investigate the incident due to political ties with Leonard. It is not normal for the investigation division to investigate misdemeanor charges.”
Tully adds fuel to the speculative fire, claiming that it was unusual that three assistant Shasta County felony DAs were assigned to the triple joinder misdemeanor case (Zapata, Meagher and Bailey each had their own attorney). Tully suggests Moty has a motive for using the machinery of justice to go after Zapata.
“If Carlos could be dirtied, if he could be muddied up, if his reputation could be taken down, then that would help him in the recall election process,” Tully says. “I’ve never seen that type of resources [in a misdemeanor case], it just simply doesn’t happen.”
Shasta County District 2 Supervisor Leonard Moty.
Moty, who has threatened to sue RWB for libel, accuses the group of perpetuating yet more “innuendos, lies, and conspiracy theories” with its latest episode.
“I contacted Nathan Pinkney, via FB, after he posted he was assaulted,” Moty said via email. “I hadn’t had any previous contact with him. It bothered me that the assault appeared to be due to his outspoken opposition to the recall. It was concerning that local politics in Shasta County had dipped so low that now violence was being used as a tool to intimidate people.”
“Afterwards, Nathan chose his own path,” Moty continued. “I did contact Chief Schueller to alert him to a potentially volatile situation in our community. The Chief told me that several other people had already reported the incident to him. I did not make any special request of the Chief.
“Beyond that, every statement made by Carlos Zapata and his followers is nothing more than innuendos, lies, and conspiracy theories. I never had any contact with anyone in the District Attorney’s office or the judicial system regarding this incident. I never suggested or hinted to the authorities as to what actions should be taken. This is typical RW&B fabrication with zero facts to support their claims.”
Tully’s a colorful defense attorney who’s written a couple of books, including his latest, California: State of Collusion, in which he hypothesizes that not all police, prosecutors and judges are sociopaths, just most of them. He’s fond of citing the Milgram shock experiments as evidence that jurors are under an authoritarian thumb and generally tend to vote against defendants.
“What the study found was they could talk a lot of people into administering what they thought was a deadly shock to another human being as someone in a lab coat said please continue the experiment,” he says. “So that’s what were up against as defense attorneys in a courtroom.”
Tully goes on to whine about the press, including A News Café. All of that negative publicity taints the jury pool. It’s worth noting that when Tully had A News Café publisher Doni Chamberlain temporarily removed from covering the trial, when asked by the judge, no one on the jury had heard of her or A News Café.
It’s all in vain. Tully’s just smearing lipstick on a pig. As if to prove the point, the episode concludes with the temper tantrum Zapata threw in the board of supervisors chamber in August, on the first anniversary of his original COVID-19 rant.
Doni Chamberlain covered the unauthorized meeting and was one of the few people wearing a mask in the crowded chamber. I originally watched it on livestream as it happened. Zapata was rambling along then suddenly zeroed in on Chamberlain’s mask. He lost control and launched into a profane, paranoid, misogynistic tirade, egged on by a sadistic sycophantic audience.
It’s easily one of the most odious displays I’ve ever seen in a public hearing, and it had to be cleaned up considerably for inclusion in the episode.
“When we have people like Doni Chamberlain, who is the only person in this room wearing a mask covering her coward face, telling lies about me, about my family and about my friends!” Zapata exploded, glaring menacingly at the website publisher. “You want to sit next to me in court, you want to follow me around, you want to have your people spy on me, you want to investigate me! Well, here I am!”
For obvious reasons, Chamberlain has declined to interview the irritable Zapata during his short rise to infamy. For the record, Zapata has declined multiple requests to be interviewed by me for A News Cafe.
“This is what we’re up against, we’re up against people who will say anything and do anything to hurt our children, to hurt us,” Zapata concludes.
It seems preposterous that the producers of RWB sat around in a circle and decided, “Yes! Let’s end the episode on this note!”
But we live in preposterous times, where, whether you’re the former president falsely claiming he won the last election or a short-tempered political novice whining about a well-deserved misdemeanor conviction, playing the sore loser is considered honorable behavior.
That’s what RBW Episode 6.5 is all about.
On Nov. 30, Emiliano Carlos Zapata notified the Shasta County Superior Court he intends to appeal his misdemeanor disturbing the peace conviction. Hat tip to one of our readers, stand by for future Carlos Zapata news.
