To Defend America—Will Inauguration Day AntiFa Rioters Get “Exemplary Sentencing”? | Articles

To Defend America—Will Inauguration Day AntiFa Rioters Get “Exemplary Sentencing”?

11/14/2017

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Earlier, by James Fulford “Well, That’s Different.” DC Rioters Face 10 Years Prison + $25k Fine For “Felony Rioting”

Hours after Donald J. Trump was sworn in as President, VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow observed in his otherwise-dark “It Will Come To Blood”–Reflections On The Left’s Anti-Trump Inauguration Tantrum that

if the incoming Trump Administration is behind the federal prosecutor’s apparent intention to charge rioters with ‘felony rioting’ i.e. go for exemplary sentencing, that all by itself justifies the 2016 election.

Brimelow linked to Majority of 230 protesters arrested on Inauguration Day will face 10 years in prison and $25k fine as US attorney says they will be charged with felony rioting [by Anna Hopkins and Cheyenne Roundtree, Daily Mail, January 21 2017].

Finally, we’re about to find out. The stakes could not be higher—either the law is enforced against America’s emerging totalitarian Alt-Left or they will succeed in suppressing debate in the public square as completely as they have already done in colleges. (Or, of course, patriots could fight back—in which case they may find themselves attacked by Democrat-controlled law enforcement, as in Charlottesville. This is anarcho-tyranny). Unfortunately, early signs are not all good.

On Wednesday November 15, the first trial of defendants charged with felony riot and as many as seven other felonies arising out of the Inauguration Day disturbances is scheduled to begin jury selection. Seven defendants will be in the dock:

Jennifer Armento
Oliver Harris
Brittne Lawson
Michelle Macchio
Christina Simmons
Jayram Tortay
Alexei Wood

If convicted on all counts, their Leftist supporters claim each defendant could accumulate as much as 70 years in prison, and be fined $25,000.

Be still, my heart!

In all, at least 235 defendants, all but five arrested on January 20 (J20 in LeftSpeak), were indicted on felony charges by D.C. grand juries.

Note that none of them were held without bail—unlike the Alt Right Charlottesville Five. After all, these AntiFa were only trying to prevent the inauguration of the democratically-elected President of the United States.

As far as I can determine, and contrary to Editor Brimelow’s hypothesis, these grand juries were empaneled by Washington D.C. U.S. Attorney Channing D. Phillips, an Obama appointee (and an African American). However, as is usually the case when the White House changes hands, he was replaced on September 24 by Trump-appointee Jessie K. Liu.

The Alt Left defendants’ apologists make two, mutually incompatible arguments:

There was no riot;
The defendants were “bystanders,” as opposed to “actors.” [Hundreds Face Conspiracy Charges For Actions Of A Few During Inauguration Day Protests by Eoin Higgins, The Intercept, October 25, 2017, 11:32 a.m.]

“Bystanders” to what?

“Actors” in what, a movie?

Is this a Woody Allen joke—"The riot was lousy—and there wasn’t enough of it!”?

The distinction between bystanders and actors may possibly make sense in discussing a riot, but if one denies, as the defendants’ supporters do, that any riot took place, then the distinction collapses.

The Totalitarian Left has defined its own violence as “dissent,” while redefining mere dissent by patriots as “violence.”

The venerable Leftist rag The Nation was also a riot—pun intended. The day before President Trump’s inauguration, it ran a literal call to arms by British-born, Brooklyn-based “anti-fascist” activist Natasha Lennard. She called for unrelenting violence against anyone to the right of Pol Pot, including during the Inauguration the following day:

[Liberals] forget, too, that while the First Amendment ensures that the government will not interfere with free speech, this has no bearing on neo-fascists having the right to be heard or countenanced by the rest of us….
Trump’s inauguration is an opportunity—with regards to spectacle—to set the tone of resistance to come….
One member of the “D.C. counter-inaugural welcoming committee” commented anonymously that housing space for 1,000 visiting radicals, in both church halls and houses, had been organized by their group alone. New York anarchists are raising funds to rent whole buses to attend. And, as historic anti-fascist mass protest dictates, there are plans for a large black bloc—a spectacle both intentionally threatening and anonymizing….
The decision to join the Women’s March or Disrupt #J20 should not be a benchmark for division. This line instead should only be drawn when someone, in professed name of democracy, would sooner condemn or even imprison anti-fascist, anti-racist actors before they would see a ceremony affirming and buoying fascism meet with interference.
[Anti-Fascists Will Fight Trump’s Fascism in the Streets by Natasha Lennard, The Nation, January 19, 2017]

But nine months and a day later, The Nation’s editors had developed amnesia about their complicity and acted as if a bunch of Randian libertarians had been rounded up on January 20^th

Sam Menefee-Libey of the DC Legal Posse, a group of activists who provide support to the defendants, was more blunt, criticizing the cases as “blatant political prosecutions” designed to “chill resistance.”

(In general, “Resistance”, as used by Communists and their Democrat fellow travelers, is a code phrase for political violence).

The story of the J20 protesters should frighten anyone concerned about the future of both free assembly and dissent in the United States. [But The Nation doesn’t believe in them! —NS].
[The Prosecution of Inauguration-Day Protesters Is a Threat to Dissent by Chip Gibbons, The Nation, October 20, 2017.]

Anyway, the distinction between “rioter” and “bystander” is not a given. Conspirators and others may be guilty of rioting, without being active rioters, and one can be guilty of a violent crime via guilt by association. Two legal terms for this are “acting in concert” and “criminal responsibility.”

For instance, when I was a social worker, one of my black foster kids, who was over 18, and a group of four or five of his friends, surrounded and robbed a man. My foster kid kept complaining that he hadn’t put a hand on the victim, and thus that he wasn’t guilty of any crime.

On Inauguration Day, the situation quickly turned chaotic. Some members of the “protest” a.k.a. riot crowd adopted Black Bloc tactics, hiding their identities and taking part in property destruction. “There were windows breaking, chemicals in the air…The cops didn’t seem to have any control over the situation,” Alex Stokes was quoted as saying in the Intercept article above.

Stokes is another journalist who was arrested on January 20, though the charges against him were later dropped.

Note the phony, passive voice. “The situation” did not “turn chaotic”—the rioters made it so. The rioters did not engage “in minor property destruction”—they incinerated e.g. one stretch limousine after writing slogans on it; they smashed the windows in Larry King’s SUV; they smashed store windows. Windows did not spontaneously break, and chemicals did not spring into the air.

As for the cops not controlling the situation, I doubt Stokes would have appreciated it if they had taken control.

Prosecutors must weave the rioters’ defenders’ sophistry into their closing arguments—to expose the Totalitarian Left’s violence and mendacity, gain felony convictions and defend American liberty.

What’s happened so far:

One defendant has already pleaded guilty to felony riot: Dane Powell.

Unfortunately, and ominously, this case nullified by Presiding Judge of the Criminal Division of the Washington, D.C. Superior Court, Lynn Leibovitz (PDF). Judge Leibovitz sentenced Powell to 36 months in jail for felony rioting and felony assault on a police officer—but suspended all but four months of the sentence, and gave him two years of supervised probation. [Florida Man Sentenced to Prison Term For His Role in Inauguration Day Riot, Press Release, Department of Justice, D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, July 7, 2017].

Judge Leibovitz also sabotaged

the misdemeanor plea of Cody Stewart.

She sentenced Stewart to 60 days in jail—but suspended all of the jail sentence on the condition that he complete four months of probation.

During that time, Stewart must perform 50 hours of community service, and pay a $100 fine.

Big whoop.

Leibowitz, let the record show, was appointed by George W. Bush in 2001.

(I’m working on finding out what happened in the other misdemeanor cases—see below).

The Totalitarian Left has been emboldened by years of lack of punishment, and implicit and explicit support from the Ruling Class. They have brought about a moral reversal, in which America’s violent, domestic enemies are treated like moral paragons, while white patriots are treated like criminal pariahs.

If America is to be saved, US Attorney Jessie K. Liu must make these prosecutions a series of teachable moments, and instruct these violent traitors that there is a steep price to be paid for treading the First Amendment and the rule of law under foot.

Nicholas Stix [email him] is a New York City-based journalist and researcher, much of whose work focuses on the nexus of race, crime, and education. He spent much of the 1990s teaching college in New York and New Jersey. His work has appeared in Chronicles, The New York Post, Weekly Standard, Daily News, New York Newsday, American Renaissance, Academic Questions, Ideas on Liberty and many other publications. Stix was the project director and principal author of the NPI report, The State of White America-2007. He blogs at Nicholas Stix, Uncensored.

J20 Defendants Yet to be Tried (Including the First Round of 7): 195

(PDID is the DC Police Department ID number used for tracking arrestees through the court system.)