Tag Archives: political prisoner

Unequal Justice Strikes Again

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On Thursday, The Washington Examiner reported the following:

At least 11 anti-Israel protesters arrested in Washington, D.C., had their misdemeanor charges dropped Thursday evening, one day after protesters scrawled graffiti across federal property and burned an American flag in the nation’s capital.

The charges for the 11 protesters who had their cases dropped included crossing police lines and disorderly conduct at the protest attended by thousands in Washington on Wednesday, according to the Washington attorney general’s office. Additionally, at least seven people charged by the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington were released pending their next court hearing, according to Washington Superior Court records obtained by the Washington Examiner.

The protesters given release conditions face charges such as assault on a police officer, attempted assault with a deadly weapon, making threats, and attempted second-degree theft, and they have been issued a “Stay Away” order to avoid the Union Station grounds until they head to preliminary hearings in late August.

How many January 6th political prisoners are in jail still awaiting trial?

The article notes:

Protests against Netanyahu’s appearance in the District of Columbia marked the largest violent protest in the area since the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, where thousands of supporters of Trump descended on the complex and entered the building in anger and frustration over his 2020 election defeat.

More than 1,424 defendants have been charged since the Jan. 6 protest, the Justice Department said in May, and about 350 people from the event were charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees, including approximately 110 people who used a deadly or dangerous weapon to cause serious harm to a law enforcement officer. At least 145 people have been sentenced to prison terms over 151 months and roughly 172 defendants have been sentenced to periods of home detention, including approximately 31 who were sentenced to a period of incarceration.

The dropped charges against anti-Israel protesters come as critics have accused the Justice Department of cracking down more harshly on Jan. 6 defendants than on protesters who engage in similar conduct but whose causes align with the Left.

Welcome to our banana republic.

Good News For The January 6th Political Prisoners

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Reader alert: this is one of those stories I occasionally post that I really don’t understand the repercussions of.

On Wednesday, The Epoch Times posted an article about the repercussions of the Supreme Court’s ruling involving obstruction charges against the January 6th defendants.

The article reports:

U.S. prosecutors have started dropping obstruction charges against defendants alleged to have been involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol, in the wake of a crucial Supreme Court decision.

Government prosecutors informed defendants and the judge overseeing the defendants’ cases that it will drop charges brought under federal law Section 1512(c)(2) in light of the ruling from the nation’s top court, according to a July 15 filing.

“This decision was made in order to avoid disruption to the trial schedule for a five-defendant case, and the dismissal eliminates the need for additional litigation as to the sufficiency of the Section 1512 charge as applied to these defendants,” the prosecutors told the judge.

…“Given the length of time this case has been pending, the specific facts of this case, the other relevant charges, the current trial date, and the need to promote judicial economy and efficiency, the United States requests that Count One be dismissed without prejudice in the interests of justice and that trial proceed on the remaining counts on August 12, 2024,” prosecutors said.

Defendants in other cases, and multiple people who have been convicted and are awaiting sentencing, have asked judges to consider the effect of the ruling. Some of the judges have ordered prosecutors to file briefs presenting their positions on what impact the ruling has on charges against the defendants.

The article notes:

Supreme Court justices said in the ruling, released June 28, that federal prosecutors went overboard in their application of Section 1512, which was approved by Congress in the aftermath of the Enron scandal and bars altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing records.

The law also says that a person who “otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.”

Prosecutors said that the latter part of the law cover various crimes carried out by Jan. 6 defendants, a view rejected by the court’s majority.

It’s interesting that some of these charges are being dropped in view of a possible election victory by President Trump in November. Will the people who actually riot on President Trump’s inauguration day (as they did in January 2017) actually be put in jail?

Crime In America

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Recently Daniel Greenfield posted an article about crime in America. It wasn’t an article about the crime rate or an article about statistics–it was an article about who gets arrested and charged with a crime.

The article reports:

On Wednesday, three teens were arrested for riding e-scooters over an LGBTQ ‘Pride’ mural painted on a crosswalk in Spokane, Washington. One of the teens was charged with a first degree felony and bail was set at $15,000.

On Saturday, in another Washington thousands of miles away, Hamas supporters rioted near the White House. They threw bottles at a park ranger and vandalized national monuments with graffiti reading “Death to America”. Islamic terrorist supporters waved banners and held up signs in support of Hamas. One man in a Hamas headband brandished a bloody Biden mask.

Two Park Police officers were injured in the pro-Hamas violence, but not one arrest was made.

Not a single arrest for the assault on a federal employee (1-20 years in prison), the vandalism of national monuments (10 years in prison) or the support for a terrorist organization (20 years in prison). If only they had done some donuts on a ’Pride’ mural, they might be in jail now.

I wonder how the January 6th political prisoners feel about this.

The double standard is becoming so obvious that even low-information voters are becoming aware that we are dangerously close to a police state.

The article concludes:

Crimes in free countries primarily punish assaults on property and persons while in totalitarian states they primarily punish crimes against the state. Pro-crime policies effectively decriminalized drug offenses, shoplifting and even some violent assaults because punishing crimes against persons and property was seen as upholding a racist and capitalist system.

But the police were never going to be truly defunded and crime was never going to go away. Instead in the last 5 years, crime has come to be defined as a political and social offense, an act of hate, a threat to democracy and an insult to the values and views of the ruling elite.

America’s justice system is being replaced by kangaroo courts and a banana republic system that selectively arrests, prosecutes and convicts political opponents for opposing the regime.

Whether or not something is a crime does not depend on the law, but on the politics of it. There could hardly be a clearer example of it when the day before Hamas supporters staged their attack near the White House. Steve Bannon joined another Trump adviser, Peter Navarro, in being dispatched to prison for contempt of Congress.

Is contempt of Congress a crime? It depends who is in contempt and who is in Congress.

If we don’t change administrations in November, we will be a police state.

Let’s Even The Playing Field

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On Saturday, PJ Media posted an article titled, “Time To Fight Dirty.” Frankly, I was put off by the title, but when I read the article, I realized that there were some good ideas there.

The article notes:

After witnessing the banana republic court spectacle in New York City this week, I ask our elected Republicans… have you seen enough? Are you going to continue lobbing limpwristed slaps at your enemy’s shoulder as they continue to kick you below the belt? Are you still hiding behind the whole “civility” façade, which the Left abandoned decades ago? Or are you ready to actually man up and fight like our lives, our loved ones, and our liberties depend on it?

We need to start fighting dirty, like they do. If we don’t, what remains of our constitutional order will continue to dissipate until all that remains is the totalitarian state they’ve been working for generations to achieve, complete with state censorship, show trials, and political prisoners.

And when I say we need to fight dirty, let me clarify what I am not saying. I am not saying that we should persecute innocent people, like the Left does. I am saying that we need to go full-throttle, no-holds-barred lawfare against those who do break the law and smugly get away with it.

The article lists a number of times Democrats have broken laws and suffered no consequences. The author of the article believes that there need to be consequences for anyone who breaks the law. I agree.

The article concludes:

The fiercely abolitionist Quakers contributed absolutely nothing towards winning the Civil War, nor was slavery ended by peaceful legislative process. It was ended by the soldiers who slashed and burned their way through Mississippi and Georgia, backed by a Republican president who suspended habeas corpus, who emancipated slaves with a constitutionally-tenuous executive fiat, and who secured the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment via corruption and bribery. And they were right to do so. America is a better place because Larry Hogan’s forefather wasn’t president in 1860.

They all get away with it. They always get away with it. If we win in November, our leaders must ensure that they don’t get away with it, no matter how dirty the fight gets. We need to do to them what they’ve been doing to us, and we need the moral courage to do so. Fighting is dirty only if just one side is doing it.

Holding EVERYONE accountable for their misdeeds is the only way American can move forward. Our laws need to apply to everyone.

This Could Be Very Interesting

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On March 1 (updated March 2), Trending Politics posted an article about a recent decision by a federal appeals court in Washington D.C.

The article reports:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled Friday that defendant Larry Brock — a retired Air Force colonel who was sentenced to two years in federal prison for peacefully protesting in a building — was improperly sentenced. The court took issue with the inclusion of charges of “interference with the administration of justice.”

According to Circuit Judge Millett, who authored the court’s opinion, interference with Congress’ certification of the presidential election in 2021 does not apply to a sentence enhancement.

“Brock challenges both the district court’s interpretation of Section 1512(c)(2)’s elements and the sufficiency of the evidence to support that conviction. He also challenges the district court’s application of the three-level sentencing enhancement for interfering with the ‘administration of justice,’” the opinion reads.

The court upheld Brock’s conviction but disagreed with the sentencing. “”As for Brock’s sentence, we hold that the ‘administration of justice’ enhancement does not apply to interference with the legislative process of certifying electoral votes,” Judge Millett wrote.

Obviously this decision could affect the sentences of all the January 6th political prisoners.

The article concludes:

Brock was initially arrested and charged on January 6, 2021 on just two charges: knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.

The “interference” charge was added at a later date.

“Larry Brock participated in the violent January 6th riot at the United States Capitol that forced the evacuation of members of Congress and their staff and prevented Congress’s certification of the 2020 presidential election until the next day. After a bench trial, the court convicted Brock of six crimes, including corruptly obstructing Congress’s certification of the electoral count under 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2),” Judge Millet wrote. “At sentencing, the district court applied a three level sentencing enhancement to Brock’s Section 1512(c)(2) conviction on the ground that Brock’s conduct resulted in ‘substantial interference with the administration of justice.’”

The Supreme Court is also reviewing the validity of the Biden DOJ’s use of the “obstruction of an official proceeding” statute.

Stay tuned.

 

Is The Department Of Justice Capable Of Telling The Truth?

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Yesterday Breitbart reported the following:

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has withdrawn its claim that a Capitol riot suspect was found to be in possession of a “fully constructed” LEGO set depicting the U.S. Capitol; the LEGO set was still contained in a box, the DOJ said Friday.

The article continues:

Robert Morss, a substitute social studies teacher, allegedly engaged in violent behavior during the riot, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette …

In court documents filed July 2, as the Department of Justice pushed for Morss to be detained until trial, the federal government noted:

During his arrest, law enforcement recovered some clothing and other items that appear to match those he carried with him on the 6th – including a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, a neck gaiter, a military utility bag, a black tourniquet, and military fatigues. (Law enforcement also recoverd a fully constructed U.S. Capitol Lego set.) In addition, MORSS had three different firearms including a handgun, a shotgun, and a rifle….

The Capitol set is one of the most sought-after and most expensive LEGO sets, currently priced at $266.95 at Amazon.com.

The last line of the article states:

The DOJ is seeking to ensure that Morss remains in custody, pending trial.

What we are watching is the criminalization of any political views that differ with those in the White House. There is no reason for Mr. Morss to remain in custody. He is a threat to no one. He is a political prisoner of the Biden administration.