On the day of the Club Q shooter's sentencing, the top brass at Biden's Justice Department delivered a diatribe of buzzwordy proportions against all apparent domestic threats to gays, "transgenders," and everything else in between and beyond.
24-year-old convicted killer Anderson Lee Aldrich was sentenced Tuesday to 55 life sentences running concurrently, plus 190 years in prison, without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty to 74 federal hate crimes and firearms offenses for the shooting spree he carried out at Club Q, an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on November 19, 2022.
Mugshot of Club Q shooting suspect has been released. Andersen Lee Aldrich’s public defender has stated that Andersen is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns. #ClubQ pic.twitter.com/rt4qBFiMjP
— Erik Herrera (@photoswitherik) November 23, 2022
According to the plea agreement, Aldrich admitted to murdering five victims, injuring 19, and attempting to mass murder 26 more in a "willful, deliberate, malicious, and premeditated attack" at Club Q. As part of the guilty plea, Aldrich admitted that this mass shooting was motivated by bias, specifically based on an "actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity" of the victims.
At a press conference addressing Aldrich's fate, the Biden administration huffed and puffed about "homophobic hate" and anti-LGBTQ violence in the midst of Pride Month.
There are just a few unfavorable facts they neglected to disclose.
Aldrich apparently identifies as neither male nor female and goes by "gender non-conforming" pronouns, according to a footnote his public defenders authored in a court filing requesting that he be allowed to wear civilian clothes at his arraignment.
"Anderson Aldrich is non-binary. They use they/them pronouns, and for the purposes of all formal filings, will be addressed as Mx. Aldrich," Aldrich's defense attorneys wrote of their client in a May 2023 motion filed in his state-level Colorado case, which was separate from the federal proceedings.
During prepared remarks Tuesday afternoon, Assistant AG Kristen Clarke of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division made no mention of Aldrich's supposed sexual identity. Instead, treading cautiously, she and the other officials assembled were careful not to use Aldrich's "preferred pronouns," as the Biden DOJ has done in the past to affirm "trans" pedophiles.
If they had "misgendered" him (that is—use biologically accurate terms), they'd risk offending the very ilk Aldrich attacked. Meanwhile, playing the pronoun game would've flattened the moral highground they stood upon.
So, they opted to only refer to Aldrich as "the defendant," studiously sidestepping the PC landmine altogether.
"Fueled by hate, the defendant targeted members of the LGBTQIA+ community at a place that represented belonging, safety, and acceptance..." Attorney General Merrick Garland declared in a DOJ press release, failing to mention that Aldrich purportedly is a member of that community. "The 2022 mass shooting at Club Q is one of the most violent crimes against the LGBTQIA+ community in history," FBI Director Christopher Wray added.
Though Aldrich's LGBTQ identification was entered into the public record at the local level, it appears that the federal government is well aware of this inconvenient tidbit.
In the 24-page plea agreement drafted by the DOJ, federal prosecutors used the personal pronouns "they" and "their" to refer to Aldrich's admissions. While it could be perceived as gender-neutral legal language, compare this to Hunter Biden's proposed plea deal, in which the DOJ had written "he" and "his." (The preponderance of the First Son's penis pictures did leave little to the imagination.)
"Legal experts" speaking to the mainstream media felt that Aldrich's gender identity bore no bearing on his bias.
The chair of the National Trans Bar Association told The San Diego Union-Tribune that regardless of Aldrich's delusions about gender, "one's membership in a protected group in no way obviates the possibility that the crime the individual commits is motivated by hatred." The Tribune used the mass murderer's "preferred pronouns" throughout the piece.
A deep dive into the "non-binary" shooter's troubled youth sheds some light on the identity crisis he seems to have undergone.
Aldrich, born "Nicholas Franklin Brink," altered his identity after enduring relentless cyberbullying as a teen boy. At age 15, then living in San Antonio, Texas, he legally changed his birth name to what it is today, according to Bexar County court records.
At the time, Aldrich was the subject of an online harassment campaign that culminated in an entry on Encyclopedia Dramatica, a Wikipedia-style website dedicated to trolling and crude content. Photographs of a young Aldrich, now six-foot-four and nearly 330 pounds, were posted to the parody page along with insults and offensive slurs mocking his weight. In 2010, one of the trolls created a YouTube account under his name, "Nick Brink," and uploaded an animation titled "Asian homosexual gets molested."
Encyclopedia Dramatica, the hate site that compiled years of records of online bullying of the Colorado Springs' suspect, updated the page when they realized Aldrich had an entry for years, adding Aldrich "SHOT UP A GAY BAR BECAUSE HE WAS TIRED OF ALL THE 'HARRASSMENT'!" pic.twitter.com/22vUhnQyRN
— Tim Onion (@oneunderscore__) November 23, 2022
Aldrich's father, Aaron Brink, was an amateur porn actor who went by the stage name "Dick Delaware." Prior to his porn career, he was an MMA fighter competing professionally in the UFC, among other mixed martial arts promotions.
After joining the hardcore porno scene, the "meaty" actor delved into drugs. In addition to starring in "Spider-Man XXX: A Porn Parody" as the supervillain Electro, he appeared in episodes of "Intervention," an A&E reality TV show that documented his struggles as a drug addict, and "Divorce Court," where his wife, Vanessa Brink, also an ex-porn star, was sick of his meth use and wanted to separate.
According to his appearance in the documentary series, Brink would masturbate for "10 to 12 hours" after injecting crystal meth.
Just before Aldrich perpetrated his attack, Brink thought his son died years ago by suicide, telling CBS 8 he believed that he had killed himself. When Aldrich's legal counsel informed Brink he was involved in the Colorado Springs shooting, his initial reaction was to question why he was at an LGBTQ bar.
"You know Mormons don't do gay. We don't do gay. There's no gays in the Mormon church. We don't do gay," Brink said.
Brinks, formerly an MMA coach, said he taught his son how to fight. "I praised him for violent behavior really early. I told him it works. It is instant and you'll get immediate results," he recalled in the CBS 8 interview.
Former UFC fighter Aaron Brink, father of the Colorado Springs Club Q shooter speaks out.
— Al Zullino (@phre) November 23, 2022
"We're Mormons, we don't do gay." pic.twitter.com/4jJNspwV12
Aldrich's mother, Laura Voepel, was arrested for suspected arson in 2012. However, the arson charge was dismissed and she was found guilty on a lesser charge of criminal mischief. She was additionally ordered to undergo psychological evaluations and mandatory drug testing.
In June 2021, Voepel called the police on Aldrich, reporting that he threatened to harm her with a homemade bomb, multiple weapons, and ammunition. Aldrich reportedly livestreamed a video from his mother's Facebook page showing himself during what looks like a police stand-off in the wake of the bomb threat. In the footage shared with CNN, an agitated Aldrich is wearing tactical gear, suited up in body armor, and ostensibly challenging law enforcement to enter the house where he was holed up. Voepel was renting a room there in the Lorson Ranch neighborhood, a suburb on the outskirts of Colorado Springs.
"If they breach, I'mma f**king to blow it to holy hell. So, uh. Go ahead and come on in, boys! Let's f**king see it!" Aldrich is heard taunting, leading to authorities evacuating the area.
However, the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office said no explosives were ever found on-site, though they did discover "bomb-making materials" in his possession. In another video captured by a Ring doorbell, a barefoot Aldrich is seen surrendering to the SWAT team without incident following a fairly lengthy negotiation.
He was charged with three counts of first-degree kidnapping and two counts of felony menacing, but the case ended in dismissal.
While he was stockpiling weapons in the lead-up to the terroristic threat, Aldrich warned his grandparents he was going to be "the next mass killer" and bragged about desiring to "go out in a blaze," according to the arrest affidavit. His grandmother and grandfather were living in fear of Aldrich due to his "homicidal threats" towards them. The pair planned to move to Florida, which angered Aldrich, because "it would interfere with his bombmaking" in the basement of their residence. During a family meeting to discuss the move, Aldrich held them at gunpoint, threatening: "You guys die today, and I'm taking you with me. I'm loaded and ready. You're not calling anyone."
A judge had dismissed the case because the witnesses, Aldrich's grandparents and mother, wouldn't cooperate with the prosecution. The case was then subsequently sealed.
"There is absolutely nothing there, the case was dropped, and I'm asking you either remove or update the story," Aldrich said in a voice message left for an editor at The Colorado Springs Gazette. "The entire case was dismissed."
Aldrich's arrest records were ultimately unsealed after the court decided that the public's "profound" interests outweighed the defendant's petition for privacy. This also allowed authorities to answer questions as to why charges against Aldrich were dropped.
"This office absolutely prosecuted it," District Attorney Michael Allen said of the 2021 case. "We prosecuted it until we couldn’t prosecute it any longer [...] We did everything we could have done on that case."
Prosecutors unsuccessfully attempted several times to serve subpoenas, but were met with resistance, The Colorado Sun reported. The defense even praised the prosecution's "valiant efforts" to usher the witnesses into the courtroom, but said there was "no likelihood these people are going to be showing up."
At a hearing to lower his bond, Aldrich's mother described him as "a loving and passionate young man," his grandmother said he didn't deserve to rot in jail, and his grandfather insisted he would "take advantage of a second chance."
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