This doesn’t really warrant its own post, but what the hell, I’m doing it anyway.
I’m still signed up to get push alerts on my phone from my old station in Fayetteville when big stories break. There were two today that really caught my attention.
I reported quite a bit about a psychiatrist accused of holding patients against their will, as well as billing fraud and other allegations. Today the DEA raided his office. One of our lead anchors at KNWA, Chad Mira, has been all over this story from the beginning. Given their daily duties and responsibilities on the desk, anchors don’t get a ton of opportunities to really dig deep into a story, but Chad did on this one. I helped out with an assortment of web stories, but Chad really put effort into this, and he got an exclusive interview with several of the doctor’s victims.
So I had to text Chad and check in regarding the DEA news.
Then, there is Richard “BigO” Barnett, more generally known as “that idiot who put his feet up on a desk in Nancy Pelosi’s office during the insurrection in DC.” I couldn’t even guess how many hours I spent covering his case, including the lead-up to his federal trial, the seemingly non-stop delays and continuances, the trial itself—from afar, which isn’t easy—and all of the post-conviction machinations leading up to today’s sentencing.
Big O was sentenced to over four years in federal prison. As someone familiar with a lot of the details, this feels about right to me. I’m glad it wasn’t just a slap on the wrist, and I really appreciated some of the judge’s remarks about it. He noted that Barnett has become a face of that day, and that he seems to enjoy it, which is absolutely true based on everything I have heard and read.
Secondly, and more importantly, he refuted Barnett’s unbelievable stance that he was somehow swept up in the activity while he was looking for a bathroom. The guy brought a goddamn stun gun with him. Judge Cooper sagely noted that BigO was ready for violence.
The funny part was that the sentencing was noteworthy enough here in Vegas that we did an update desk hit on it. And performing that update? None other than former Fayetteville anchor Mike Allen. So I was sitting at my computer, working away as usual, as I hear my colleague from two different stations providing an update on a story that was big for both of us at our previous one.
It felt surreal. Worlds colliding, as George Costanza might say.