Changing The Rules After The Fact

On Monday, PJ Media reported the following:

On Jan. 6, 2021, a protestor, 40-year-old Brady Knowlton, says that an officer at the Capitol told “You can go in, as long as you don’t break anything.” At 2:35 p.m., Knowlton did, entering through the Upper West Terrace doors. He looked around inside the building, walked through the Rotunda, lobby, and Senate chamber gallery, obeyed the officer’s injunction not to break anything, and left the building at 2:53 p.m. For that, Knowlton now faces twenty years in prison in Old Joe Biden’s vengeful banana republic.

…According to the charges filed against him in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Knowlton “did unlawfully and knowingly enter and remain in a restricted building and grounds.” He also “did knowingly, and with intent to impede and disrupt the orderly conduct of Government business and official functions, engage in disorderly and disruptive conduct in and within such proximity to, a restricted building and grounds, that is, any posted, cordoned-off, and otherwise restricted area within the United States Capitol and its grounds, where the Vice President and Vice President-elect were temporarily visiting.” He “willfully and knowingly engaged in disorderly and disruptive conduct within the United States Capitol Grounds. He “willfully and knowingly entered and remained in the gallery of either House of Congress, without authorization to do so.”

If Knowlton’s contention that a police officer said he could go in is true, it vitiates all these charges, and Knowlton’s claim is certainly corroborated by photographic and video evidence of cops at the Capitol opening gates, holding the doors open for protestors, and reports that police even posed for selfies with protestors. Also, when the FBI raided Knowlton’s home, they found no evidence whatsoever “concerning the breach and unlawful entry” of the Capitol, or “of any conspiracy, planning, or preparation,” or “maps or diagrams” of the Capitol, or of any “materials, devices, or tools” that Knowlton might have planned to use to get inside.

The article notes the obvious contrast with the way people with other political views have been treated:

Compare the treatment of Knowlton and the other Jan. 6 scapegoats to the treatment of Quintez Brown, the Black Lives Matter activist who recently shot at Louisville mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg. Journalist Miranda Devine noted that Brown was “portrayed sympathetically by the media and immediately bailed out of jail by his Black Lives Matter comrades, who crowdfunded the $100,000 cost.” Devine added that Brown was “a celebrated gun control advocate, anointed as a rising star by the Obama Foundation, he was an honored guest on Joy Reid’s MSNBC show. He was granted a biweekly opinion column in the Louisville Courier-Journal to spew boilerplate leftist, race-based, anti-cop sentiment.” Brown had, Devine says, “BLM privilege.” Indeed.

This sort of uneven treatment divides America. It is time that we went back to the concept of “equal justice under the law” which was part of the foundation of our government. If the foundation is destroyed, the building falls down.

When The Punishment Doesn’t Fit The Crime

On Friday, Trending Politics posted an article about the sentencing of one of the rioters in the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020.

The article reports:

One of the main tenants for a stable and law-abiding society is a judicial system that enforces laws and ensures equal justice for all.

The reverse is true in progressive cities, resulting in an increase in crime.

Various government organizations, even all the way up to the Department of Justice, have gone astray. Social justice warriors are now in positions in the DOJ to implement “racial justice”, which determines how to prosecute cases based on the race and/or social justice cause, not commensurate with the crimes committed.

A perfect example can be seen in a murder committed by a BLM arsonist.

On June 5, 2020, in Minnesota, BLM riots were breaking out and becoming violent. Hundreds of people took to the streets and began looting local businesses, vandalizing private property, and recklessly setting fire to buildings. Montez Terriel Lee Jr. was one of these violent actors.

That night, Lee broke into a pawn shop, poured fire accelerant around, and set it on fire. These actions were caught on video.

Two months later, a 30-year-old man, Oscar Lee Stewart, was found dead among the debris.

The article reports on the sentencing of Mr. Lee:

In another act of injustice, Lee is facing a shorter sentence than normal because, according to US Attorney W. Anders Folk, he was “caught up in the fury” of the Black Lives Matter riots.

…Instead of facing the typical sentence of 200 months, US Attorney W. Anders Folk recommended less time because of the “motives” behind the arson and killing.

The article includes part of a memo written by the U.S. Attorney:

“Mr. Lee’s motive for setting the fire is a foremost issue. Mr. Lee credibly states that he was in the streets to protest unlawful police violence against black men, and there is no basis to disbelieve this statement. Mr. Lee, appropriately, acknowledges that he ‘could have demonstrated in a different way,’ but that he was ‘caught up in the fury of the mob after living as a black man watching his peers suffer at the hands of police,’” the memo stated.

I would like to point out that the January 6th political prisoners have been treated very differently (and the damage caused by most of them was minimal).  At some point this sort of injustice is going to create a really ugly backlash against those who are supposed to be upholding law and order.

Changing The Rules According To Political Beliefs

On Friday, The Gateway Pundit posted an article that illustrates the current problem with justice in America.

The article reports:

Democrat Rep. Joyce Beatty along with a group of far-left protesters stormed the Hart Senate Building on Thursday chanting, “End the filibuster!

Congresswoman Beatty, who is the head of the Congressional Black Caucus, was arrested during the insurrection by Capitol Police.
Police zip-tied her wrists and marched her off.

Rep. Beatty was out of confinement soon afterward. Yet, ironically, she complained about ‘the double-standard treatment’.
She did not have to worry about being held indefinitely without trial. She did not have to worry about losing her job or being doxxed in her community.

Meanwhile, over 20 Trump supporters still languish in isolation in a DC prison for walking into the US Capitol on Jan. 6. Their lives are ruined. Their incomes and reputations are destroyed.

There is something very wrong with the double standard that now operates in our justice system. We need to remember that unequal justice can be used against any American. As we see some political views being labeled as ‘hate speech’; or ‘racist’ when they are no such thing, we need to remember that we are responsible for the leaders we have. It

Can You Walk Back Up A Slippery Slope?

According to Oxford Eagle:

Lavrentiy Beria, the most ruthless and longest-serving secret police chief in Joseph Stalin’s reign of terror in Russia and Eastern Europe, bragged that he could prove criminal conduct on anyone, even the innocent.

“Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” was Beria’s infamous boast.

Unfortunately we are watching a version of that statement play out in America right now.

On May 18, The New York Post reported:

New York Attorney General Letitia James’ investigation of the Trump Organization is criminal in nature, her office revealed Tuesday.

James’ office had been conducting a civil investigation of former President Donald Trump’s company.

“We have informed the Trump Organization that our investigation into the organization is no longer purely civil in nature,” a spokesperson for the attorney general said in a statement.

…James has been investigating the Trump Organization since 2019 after Trump’s onetime personal attorney, Michael Cohen, testified to Congress that Trump exaggerated the value of his financial assets in order to help score more favorable terms on loans and insurance policies. Cohen is serving the remainder of a three-year prison sentence under federal house arrest after pleading guilty to tax evasion and campaign finance violations.

The thing to keep in mind here is that Attorney General James campaigned on a platform of promising to destroy President Trump. She was elected.

During the past five or six years, we have seen our justice system turned on its head.  There has been unlawful surveillance of American citizens–a violation of their civil rights, ridiculous jail terms for people who hold conservative values, early morning raids on people who posed no flight risk (complete with advance notice to CNN), etc. The people who want to spend their time looking for a crime to attribute to President Trump need to remember that the justice system that will look for a crime to fit a person could ultimately be turned on them.

The swamp in Washington is deep and wide and extends out into many blue states. If we don’t get it drained soon, I fear that the American most of us grew up in with equal justice under the law will be gone forever.

He Probably Meant Well

The following is a post that appeared on the Judicial Watch website:

How The Barr DOJ Failed

“They’ve been protecting Hillary Clinton, they’ve been protecting Obama, they’ve been protecting the Deep State,” Fitton (Tom Fitton) stated last Friday.

Attorney General Barr’s resignation amidst a contested presidential election dominated last week’s political airwaves. On Friday, Fitton reminded viewers that “AG Barr or at least the Justice Department under AG Barr has been a black hole in terms of responding to Judicial Watch.” As Fitton reported, “they recently went to court to shut down all of our Clinton email investigations, discovery, and FOIA lawsuits – they don’t want us to do anything.”

Fitton believes that the Justice Department has turned a blind eye to scandals surrounding VP Joe Biden, especially material evidence discovered on Hunter Biden’s laptop last year. The scandals, which he has described as “obvious criminal conduct,” were largely set aside by the Department of Justice, according to Fitton. “They [the DOJ] protected Joe Biden and interfered in the election by doing nothing about the Joe Biden scandals.”

Those defending the DOJ’s decision to not investigate the Bidens are, in Fitton’s estimation, misunderstanding the role the Agency plays in investigating corruption surrounding presidential candidates. While it is correct that the DOJ should not investigate candidates in a bid to influence the outcome of an election, Fitton believes that the Agency is doing just that – but in a different way: “this person is running for office and they get a get of jail free card.” Likening the policy to a game of Monopoly, Fitton contrasts this approach with that employed by the DOJ against President Trump, when “they specifically targeted Trump because he was running for office.

As Fitton concluded, “it doesn’t matter who the next AG is, I don’t expect any difference coming January. We just have to keep doing the work we’re doing. We can’t trust them to investigate Biden, so we’ll do it instead.”

The fact that no one in authority was charged in the overt violation of the civil rights of the people involved in the Trump campaign and the Trump transition team says a lot about the corruption in our federal law enforcement agencies. The fact that a senior administration official can totally mishandle classified information and pay no price while a sailor goes to jail for taking a picture of his workplace is disturbing. Somewhere along the line we have lost the concept of equal justice under the law. Until someone has the courage to clean out the agencies that are supposed to be working for all Americans–not just those of one political persuasion–our country will be in danger of becoming a banana republic. We are already hearing cries from some Democrats of investigating the President when he leaves office with the goal of arresting him. That shouldn’t happen in America. An honest justice department and related agencies is needed. Unfortunately, William Barr was not able to deliver that.