Montana man Richard Rogers was convicted of threatening former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R–Bakersfield) after expressing anger about a Chinese spy balloon floating over his city in Billings.

Rogers delivered threats to McCarthy’s office during multiple phone calls, including making harassing calls to McCarthy’s office and the FBI tip line in 2021 and 2022, where he routinely used vulgar and obscene language.

The big picture: The federal jury found Rogers guilty on three counts – threatening to harm a member of Congress and two counts of making harassing telephone calls.

• Rogers faces a potential sentence of up to six years in prison and a fine for threatening a member of Congress, as well as a separate penalty for the harassment counts.
• While awaiting sentencing on January 31, U.S. District Judge Susan Watters allowed Rogers to remain free without custody.
• Rogers, during his trial, argued that his calls were a form of civil disobedience and protected under the First Amendment, while the prosecutors maintained that his behavior crossed the line with threats and verbal abuse.
• Despite his guilty verdict, Rogers maintains that he never threatened anyone and expressed dissatisfaction with his defense attorneys for not adequately presenting his case.

Before Tom Brady arrived on the NFL scene, Hall of Famer Joe Montana was widely considered the greatest player in the game for leading the San Francisco 49ers to four Super Bowl titles.

This week, Brady returns to his home state of California, where he grew up a 49ers fan idolizing Montana, to call the Cardinals-Niners game. And Joe Cool talked to FOX Sports about what made Brady so successful during a 23-year career that included seven Super Bowl victories.

The former San Francisco quarterback said what was most impressive about Brady was his ability to quickly deliver the ball on time and on target. 

“It was a decision-making process,” Montana said. “He made quick decisions, and he would dump the ball down underneath, too. He had a couple of guys on the smaller side that would go down there and do that dirty work. When you look at someone like [Julian] Edelman, hey I’d give him the ball every chance I got, too. Yet he’d still throw the ball down the field when he had the opportunity.

“That’s the biggest thing I think for him was that decision-making process. The faster you can make that decision, the more success you have. And obviously he had a great career.” 

Tom Brady grew up a fan of Joe Montana and the 49ers during his childhood in San Mateo, California. (Photo courtesy of Maureen Brady)

Montana’s top receiver was the best to ever play the game in Jerry Rice. Asked who he would like to throw to among today’s receivers, Montana pointed to big targets like DK Metcalf and A.J. Brown.

“Justin Jefferson would probably fit in that category,” Montana said. “You look at Metcalf — there’s some big receivers out there. Jerry and John [Taylor] weren’t small, but you’re talking about guys that are 6-4, 6-5 now.

“I go back and watch Dan Marino throwing. [Mark] Duper and [Mark] Clayton weren’t very big. I can’t imagine Dan throwing to guys [the] size [of today’s receivers], and the things he could have accomplished. He was great anyway, and he had guys who would go get the ball for him that were great receivers. But the size sometimes just makes a great difference. I think that’s the biggest key: Finding people with size you trust, and you know when you throw it to them, they’re going to win that jump ball.”

Montana, 68, says he attends a game at Levi’s Stadium each season to watch his former team in person, but otherwise, he enjoys watching from the comfort of his couch. He said he’ll get his first opportunity to watch Brady the broadcaster this weekend, as Montana said he intends to watch Sunday’s 49ers game at home.

Does Montana, who spent some time as a broadcaster in the mid-1990s, have any advice for Brady in his new gig?

“I’m not sure why he took this job,” Montana said with a laugh. “He’s probably working harder on the weekends now than when he played.”

Editor’s note: Montana was made available by Pfizer, which recommends that people vulnerable to issues like pneumococcal pneumonia get vaccinated during the flu season. Find out more information at VaxAssist.com.

Eric D. Williams has reported on the NFL for more than a decade, covering the Los Angeles Rams for Sports Illustrated, the Los Angeles Chargers for ESPN and the Seattle Seahawks for the Tacoma News Tribune. Follow him on Twitter at @eric_d_williams.

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I’ll let you in on a little media secret: One of the most asked questions we get is exactly the one we can’t answer.

Here’s the question we get a lot, and we’re not alone in our inability to get answers: How much does the state of Montana spend on attorneys defending itself in court?

I get the question. The number of jobs the state has single-handedly created for attorneys should help boost the state’s monthly jobs and unemployment rate statistics. For four years of Republican control in almost all aspects of government, no bad idea has been denied the opportunity of legislation.

A lot of nonsense flew through the Legislature to the open arms of Gov. Greg Gianforte, who seemed only too happy to add his signature for the sake of furthering the alleged Republican mandate. For example, the Montana Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed its decision to keep abortion legal through the 1999 case Armstrong vs. State of Montana, which hasn’t seemed to dampen the Republican enthusiasm to pass bills to restrict the practice, and thereby re-test the resolve of the courts. That has literally cost the taxpayers of Montana millions by re-litigating that which was already well established.

The logic, if you’ll excuse the abuse of that word, is that even the lawmakers know much of what they’re passing runs contrary to case law and the Constitution. That doesn’t matter. Their own legal staff have expressed concerns through legal notes. That doesn’t matter either.

These are show-bills that demonstrate how committed Republicans are to their own policies and satisfying a riled-up base. What happens after that truly becomes a matter for the courts and the state’s treasury.

The danger and fallacy of a supermajority is the belief that just because Montanans have generally supported Republicans, they support every single position that Republicans coalesce around. There are notable exceptions, for example, support for public lands even though the GOP has tried to curtail our natural resources and access. And, of course, Montanans seemed repeatedly enthusiastic about marijuana, leading to a tug-of-war where the people won the right to weed and the state’s coffers filled with a different type of green, despite the GOP’s attempts at paternalism.

But the challenge with all these challenges is that the taxpaying Montana public is supporting a cottage industry centering on state litigation, but no one — and I mean no one — can say what that means for certain. In other words, how much is bad legislation costing us?

Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen can hold onto his cowboy hat at this point: As much as he continues to add his name to any lawsuit that would seem to antagonize the Biden administration throughout the country, he’s got plenty of work here at home. And he doesn’t necessarily have a choice.

The Attorney General, by definition, is forced to defend the state, and by extension, the lawmakers who author and support some of these legally dubious bills, as well as the poor bureaucrats who are tasked with implementing them.

There have been so many lawsuits, it’s hard to track them all. Two years ago, after the contentious 2021 Legislature, we were tracking more than 40 lawsuits dealing with the state, the Gianforte administration and the courts.

One may think the exercise should be as easy as looking toward the state’s budget for the Montana Department of Justice and finding the literal bottom line. But that ignores how most people think the Montana Attorney General’s Office works and how it actually works in practice.

We get asked: How many lawsuits is the state fighting? How much has Montana spent on outside counsel? How much have these struck-down bills cost us?

We don’t know. We have asked repeatedly, and by “we,” I mean multiple members of the media.

The problem is one of budgets and categories. When asking the Legislative Auditor about it, they said the answer is not clear, and that Austin Amestoy of Montana Public Radio wrote a story about it a couple of years ago where the best he could do was estimate.

I have been and continue to be critical of the way Knudsen handles the Attorney General’s Office, but this time, he probably has a point.

Lawsuits come to his office in a variety of ways — from direct challenges to other officials getting sued in their official capacity, which then obligates the state’s legion of attorneys, housed under the Attorney General, to defend them. Which department specifically pays the bills depends on how the lawsuit is filed.

The other complicating factor, of course, is that sometimes the costs are borne by in-house counsel — that is, attorneys who work for Knudsen. Some other times, the counsel comes from the private sector.

And as anyone who has ever covered a lawsuit knows, the courts have their own pace, which can grind along for years, but the attorneys submit bills every month. Those attorney billing cycles may not overlap with budget years neatly. Now, compound that by dozens of cases and getting any sort of answer about how much we’re spending becomes nearly impossible.

So, this isn’t the case of government officials trying to “hide the ball” so as not to cause sticker-shock at the amount of taxpayer money we’re spending on attorneys.

Yet maybe the “how much” question, though, isn’t quite as important as the question: Why have we seen such a dramatic rise in challenged legislation? Or, what do Montanans have to show for all this legislation besides mounting legal costs?