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The city of Rochester, New York, has reached a settlement with former RFD firefighter Jerrod Jones, who sued the city and its fire department in 2022 after accusing his superior of pressuring him to attend a racist MAGA party with displays that mocked Juneteenth and included a cardboard cut-out of Donald Trump and a performer acting out sexually explicit depictions of local Democratic politicians.
According to the Democrat &Chronicle, the city agreed to pay Jones a total of $521,000, which includes a payment of $70,000 that he’ll receive immediately, and another $75,000 that he will receive upon his retirement, reportedly four years from now. In the meantime, Jones will remain on leave while earning $92,000 a year plus benefits.
The awarded amount is only a fraction of the $ 4 million Jones said he would seek when he announced his plans to file the lawsuit, but it’s still a hefty price that could have been avoided if Jones’ former captain, Jeffrey Krywy, hadn’t allegedly lured him into attending a racist MAGA party.
From Rochester First:
The party, at the home of Dr. Nicholas Nicosia and his wife Mary, was allegedly stocked with buckets of KFC chicken alongside Juneteenth flags, a large cutout of former President Donald Trump, a woman in a red wig impersonating Monroe County Legislator Rachel Barnhart, and photos of other Democratic politicians and Rochester Police Accountability Board members on stakes planted throughout the backyard.
Nicosia and his wife denied their party included the racists and otherwise derogatory displays, calling the allegations “false and malicious,” but it probably didn’t help their case when their attorney, Cory Hogan, presented photos of the party during an August 2022 news conference as evidence that there were no racist displays, which would have been fine if not for the glaring fact that the presented photos weren’t taken on the night of the party.
From News 10 NBC:
Attorney Cory Hogan showed photos of the Nicosia house.
“You will see this event was a political event,” Hogan said. “There is absolutely no racism anywhere.”
But the photos of Donald Trump and party tables, a Juneteenth poster and corn hole game that were shown were actually staged last week to depict what the party looked like. The party happened on July 7th.
Brean: “So it was re-created?”
Hogan: “I asked the clients to set it up so that I have an accurate understanding of what was where.”
Brean: “Mr. Hogan can you share actual pictures of the party?”
Hogan: “I don’t have any. I don’t know that there were any. I can find out.”
Brean: “Mary were there pictures, actual pictures of the party?”
Mary Nicosia: “I didn’t take any pictures.”
So, the Nicosias threw a party during which they took zero pictures, and they re-created the scene with staged photos, expecting folks to take it at face value that they didn’t leave anything out that would have made their party look as Klan-ish as Jones claimed it did.
Another thing that likely didn’t help the Nicosias’ case is the inconvenient fact that Mary ran a racist account on the platform formerly known as Twitter, which was only discovered after Hogan publicly challenged “the press” to “look into their backgrounds” and “find anything they’ve done in their lives, their 50-plus year lives that’s racist,” which internet sleuths were reportedly able to do in under 25 minutes.
From NewsOne:
25 minutes later, Hogan told News 10 that “Mary Nicosia has a twitter account,” and “It’s racist.” (I’m guessing Hogan spent part of that 25 minutes cleaning all the egg from his face.)
“In full disclosure, I do have a Twitter parody account that operates under a veil of a persona and I have made blatantly racist comments under that persona,” Mary admitted.
Mary claimed her husband didn’t know anything about her bigoted Twitter fingers. (Sure, Klan…I mean, Jan.)
“But nonetheless I hold myself accountable. I am ashamed. It wasn’t an easy thing to do, to get up here and tell you this,” she said. “And I ask that you accept my apology as it is sincere.”
It appears that Jones may have benefited from racist party throwers hiring the most useless attorney in the history of lawyers who should take their law degrees back to whatever Happy Meal box they got it from.
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