With disaster averted, protesters get slap on the wrist

On the morning of Tuesday, Feb. 6, an account on X bearing the name “Izzy Nation” posted a picture of a young transgender woman taking a selfie in front of a bathroom mirror while dressed in professional attire. The post was captioned “[D]awg look at my defendant she’s going to prison.”

Later that morning while wearing the same outfit, the person in that photo, Izzy Kippes, went on trial for charges stemming from an act committed when conservative commentator and provocateur Matt Walsh appeared at the University of Iowa on the evening of April 19, 2023. Walsh spoke to a capacity crowd at the Iowa Memorial Union after an an afternoon screening of his documentary, “What is a Woman?”

Kippes and co-defendant Elizabeth Jorgensen, also a transgender woman, were charged with criminal mischief in the fifth degree and disorderly conduct for dropping a large quantity of marbles on a hard floor at the top of the staircase near a major point of entry into the IMU building, which caused a significant safety hazard to hundreds of people nearby.

Like two halves of a pecan, Kippes and Jorgensen are nuts from the same shell. They reside together in Iowa City (which made them easier for police to identify and locate.) They protest the things leftists like to protest together. They committed their devious act together, and, being represented already by the same criminal defense attorney, they went on trial together for the identical charges of disorderly conduct and criminal mischief in the fifth degree.

Kippes and Jorgensen did not deny that they were the two individuals who dropped a crap-ton of little glass rolling things around a big crowd. Not that there was much of a point in denying it — surveillance images and videos introduced as evidence for the state, explained to the jury by UI police Det. Ian Mallory, were able to link the defendants to the act through the backpacks they wore on the way into the building.

None of the surveillance evidence presented by the state actually showed Kippes and Jorgensen dumping the marbles. Instead, Det. Mallory pieced together surveillance video showing two individuals crossing the Iowa River on the footbridge toward the IMU wearing backpacks, the shape and sag of which indicated that the items inside were fairly weighty. At one point in the video, one of the individuals (Jorgensen) briefly strains to lift their backpack after setting it down for during a quick break.

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Shortly after, footage shows Jorgensen setting the backpack down on the ground at Hubbard Park, a large open grassy area directly south of the IMU building where protesters had gathered in force. After setting down the backpack, Jorgensen walks around the IMU building, testing several doors from the exterior. Some were locked — police had observed some “concerning” info on social media prior to the event about potential security issues. As a result, officials had planned several measures in advance, including controlling building access so eventgoers could only enter through certain doors.

After Jorgensen returned to the park and picked up the backpack that had been set down minutes earlier, security footage shows that both individuals entered the IMU with their backpacks through one of the few accessible entrances. Minutes later, the marbles were dumped and spotted by on-site police officer Sara Sand, who couldn’t make out the identities of the doers before they left but found the backpacks they left behind, both with marbles still inside.

Leaving the backpacks for police to find turned out to be perhaps the second biggest mistake Kippes and Jorgensen made that evening. The unique color and pattern of one of them led police to the roommate radicals, who were spotted leaving the IMU — without the backpacks they’d worn into the building — on timestamped footage that lines up with the marble-dropping.

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It almost seems surprising two people with their intellect and education (Jorgensen, 27, is a software engineer and Kippes, 26, is a cancer researcher) would make such a silly error. But apparently there’s no time to effectively plan devious acts when evil fascist bigots like Matt Walsh are on your turf and his evil fascist bigot eventgoers need punished for wanting to hear his remarks.

Things got dicey for a bit there. The UI student organization hosting Walsh, Young Americans for Freedom, had not charged money for the tickets (the organization’s national sponsor requires that events be free and open to the public in order to sponsor speaking fees.) They also had not capped the number of tickets to be obtained by interested eventgoers. Mallory estimated that tickets were over-disbursed by an amount perhaps double the capacity of the IMU main lounge, the largest gathering area in the building where Walsh’s speech was given.

That amounted to a very large number of intended eventgoers who were not granted access to the event. They had been waiting in a long and very large line next to a second long and very large line of loudly chanting protesters. The two sides were separated only by about five feet and a line of stanchions (standing posts with ropes connected between them to help control crowds) that were hastily set up to encourage some well-advised distance. It doesn’t take much for a group of neon-haired oddballs shouting “F*ck-you, fasc-ist!” at a group of disgusted conservatives to quickly devolve into a melee.

(Somewhere down in hell, Franco and Mussolini are laughing at these goofball’s understanding of fascism.)

But when told by police that they would absolutely not be getting into the event, some eventgoers turned around to discover a flood of marbles rolling around on the floor, separating them from the door through which they’d entered earlier and through which they intended to leave right then.

“I think I wrote, ‘WTF’ next to my notes,” said Mallory, who testified for the state at the Little Miss Marxists’ trial last week. Several police officers already on-site for event security were needed to clear the area. A decision was made to close the south entrance, said Mallory, as by that point it was “basically unusable.” Were any of the eventgoers or protesters to have scaled the marbles only to slip and fall, the amount of chaos and calamity that could have ensued cannot be overstated.

Furthermore, were people to have experienced serious injury from slipping on the marbles and falling, Kippes and Jorgensen’s legal liability (of course they still would have been caught) could have been significantly more severe.

As luck would have it, none of that happened. It was the steadfast and diligent efforts of the police officers on-site that ensured no injuries occurred. Ironically, those efforts by police also likely ensured that the defendants’ acts didn’t earn them more serious charges, like felony willful injury. Izzy Kippes and Elizabeth Jorgensen really should thank University of Iowa police for helping them to stay out of jail.

Instead, Kippes and Jorgensen will suffer no more than a slap on the wrist. A verdict of “guilty” was delivered by the jury on Thursday for the count of disorderly conduct, a simple misdemeanor punishable by no more than 30 days in jail and a fine of not more than $855. I don’t expect that either will actually serve time.

On the other count, criminal mischief in the 5th degree, the jury was deadlocked and therefore could not return a guilty verdict. It’s a halfway decent win for their defense attorney, Gina Messamer of Parrish Kruidenier Law Firm of Des Moines. Messamer — who I’d probably want in my corner if I needed a criminal defense — will be spending more time in Johnson County in the upcoming weeks and months defending other clients for “protest”-related charges. Iowa City’s finest radicals have had a busy season, but it’s best to tackle these cases one at a time.

In the meantime, if Kippes and Jorgensen want to continue sticking it to the man and protesting for justice and whatnot, they should try something that doesn’t actually put other peoples’ safety at risk. Whatever happened to just supergluing oneself to the wall?

Comments: 319-398-8266; althea.cole@thegazette.com