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Ed Buck, former Democratic fundraiser and donor, finally arrested

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In 2017, I wrote this diary. Some excerpts:

California law allows for the prosecution of people who supply the weapon that causes the drug death---in this case meth. When will the Los Angeles County District Attorney, or however the state Justice system works in California, file charges against Mr. Buck? I mean I know it sends, or used to send, dozens of (brown) people to death row a year so I know it isn’t soft, and its prison system is overfull. We all know Three-Strikes laws started in CA. I know CA can be hard on crime when it wants to be hard on crime (usually when brown people are involved). I want Ed Buck to be charged with the death of Gemmel Moore as he supplied the weapon that caused Moore’s death, to face a jury of his peers, and hopefully, after a trial, get convicted, and then sent to prison.

And I don’t want his political connections, extensive as they are, Democratic and progressive as they are, to cover his ass one fucking bit and neither should any of you. I want the door to be closed to him, permanently. Perhaps I’ll get my wish---from all appearances, Mr. Buck is a good fundraiser but is perhaps not very rich. He can’t buy his way out of this one, maybe.

I’ve encountered Buck’s type myself, when I was younger. I was savvy and sensed , well, evil, and kept away and warned others they should too. Not everyone is as savvy as I am. Until these predators are named and shamed---we are having a national name-it-and-shame-it moment and not a fucking moment too soon---more young gay and bi and questioning men are going to have their lives cut short.

And for what it’s worth, they ran Buck out of Arizona for “sexual inappropriateness.” I wonder what that was.

His victim’s name was Gemmel Moore. He deserves justice.

It pleases me to be able to write the follow-up. Ed Buck is in prison on state charges, and there are now sources stating federal charges are coming as well

Ed Buck, the wealthy West Hollywood Democratic donor who has been linked to a number of bizarre deaths since 2017, has been formally charged with providing methamphetamine to a man who overdosed in his home and now faces life in prison, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

Buck, who was arrested Tuesday night in connection with state-level charges tied to similar allegations, was charged in connection with the death of Gemmel Moore, whose 2017 overdose first put Buck under public scrutiny, according to a news release issued by the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.

In their statement, federal prosecutors said Buck had “provided narcotics to a series of other men, one of whom suffered two overdoses several weeks ago.” He is expected to appear in federal court later on Thursday.

Buck faces a minimum of 20 years in prison if convicted.

A debate over whether to charge Buck locally or federally had brewed in recent days, according to one of the sources who spoke to The Times.

This man was a predator. He’s now off the street. Now, of course, he deserves and is entitled to a trial before a jury of his peers, a fair trial at that. I hope he gets that. I hope that jury does what I’d consider the right thing, and deliver justice for the two men who died at Buck’s hand, and the third who almost died.

Rolling Stone notes the far right, a group that generally loathes gay people and really would love to line us all up and shoot us (yes, really, and if they say they “love they sinner, hate the sin”, they’re fucking 100% lying), is having a heyday with this, especially those QAnon people. I do not care. Rolling Stone also notes what I noted in 2017. 

But the truth is that Buck’s arrest is significant because it does point to a larger conspiracy — just not the one that far-right trolls think. Members of the community have long argued that Buck targeted vulnerable members of the community — men who were HIV-positive or homeless or struggling with drug addiction — for one specific, bone-chilling reason: because he believed he could get away with exploiting them. And if the years of police inaction regarding the allegations against Buck are any indication, he was correct in this belief. The fact that it took the deaths of two men to prove that is a tragic, shameful reminder of just how much power men like Buck still wield, and how little is shared by those our society deems disposable.

Yup. There’s others out there, who aren’t megadonors for the party (or any party) who are predators, preying on the vulnerable. It pleases me to see him headed to jail, hopefully for the remainder of his life (he’s in his 60s. If convicted federally he’s probably not coming out ever again). How many others are there out there?


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