Julie Kelly: While the Merrick Garland's DOJ and Chris Wray's FBI Scours the Country for J6 Grandmas, They Also Seek Leniency for... BLM Murderers, Because They Committed (and I'm Not Kidding) Murders For the Cause of Social Justice

Let a thousand motions for selective prosecution be filed.

Kelly lays out the grossly obvious double standards in justice that the DOJ and Wray's FBI have implemented -- and the perjurious liar Wray's denials of same. (Straight-shooting lawman -- trust him!)

After documenting the DOJ's and FBI's extreme zealotry in hounding every granny who took a selfie in the Capitol while pleading out thousands of BLM and antifa rioters, Kelly focuses in on a specific case of a BLM arsonist who murdered a man... who the DOJ asked for leniency for.

Because he burned a man to death in the cause of Racial Reparations.

Now, the Justice Department is asking for leniency for the few 2020 rioters actually facing federal charges.

ake, for example, the case of Montez Lee, Jr. On May 28, 2020, Lee, a Black Lives Matter protester, broke into Max It Pawn Shop in Minneapolis, poured gasoline throughout the store, and set it on fire.

A few days later, the mother of Oscar Stewart contacted law enforcement to report her son missing. Stewart's abandoned car was parked next to the pawn shop. It took authorities several weeks to identify the charred remains of Stewart, another black man, found inside the shop. The Hennepin County coroner ruled Stewart's death a homicide. (It's unclear if Stewart was a fellow rioter or an employee.)

Justice Department prosecutors, however, did not agree with that conclusion: Lee was charged with arson, not murder. And despite a lengthy criminal record including assault and burglary, the government offered Lee a deal to plead guilty to one count of arson, which he accepted in July.

Based on sentencing guidelines, the Justice Department calculated that the judge could sentence Lee to up to 240 months in prison. But a federal prosecutor asked the court to slice nearly eight years off his jail time. Why? Because Lee, unlike the government's view of January 6 defendants, was engaged in a political protest those now in charge deem commendable.

"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," assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Calhoun-Lopez wrote in November. "There appear to have been many people in those days looking only to exploit the chaos and disorder in the interests of personal gain or random violence. There appear also to have been many people who felt angry, frustrated, and disenfranchised, and who were attempting, in many cases in an unacceptably reckless and dangerous manner, to give voice to those feelings. Mr. Lee appears to be squarely in this latter category."

Calhoun-Lopez further argued against the judge considering deterrence in Lee's case since "the events of late May of 2020 were informed by forces that have been present in this country since its inception."

Therefore, the government concluded, Lee should be sentenced to 144 months in prison rather than 240 months.

But even that sentence was too long for Judge Wilhelmina M. Wright, a Minnesota district court judge appointed by Barack Obama in 2016. Wright, now a leading candidate to replace Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court, instead sentenced Lee to 120 months in prison. "You are more than the person that destroyed that business by fire," Wright told Lee in court on January 14. "You are more than the person who set that fire that killed a man."

Federal prosecutors and judges have no similar sympathies for January 6 protesters. To the contrary, the Justice Department and D.C. District Court judge consider Americans charged with low-level misdemeanors on January 6, 2021 to be domestic terrorists.

And yet Wray has the gall to insist that there justice is being meted out equally.

Justice depends on whether the Ruling Class approves of your motive.

FBI Director Christopher Wray is rejecting claims that his agency's aggressive investigation of the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6 contrasts with a lackluster response to violence and unrest that accompanied some Black Lives Matter protests across the country during the spring and summer of 2020.

Speaking in California, Wray offered his most detailed public rebuttal yet to critiques of the bureau put forward in recent months by some Republican lawmakers and other allies of former President Donald Trump, as well as attorneys for those charged with crimes related to the Capitol riot.

"We have one standard, which is: I don't care whether you're upset about an election or upset at our criminal justice system," Wray said during an appearance at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley on Monday night. "Whatever it is you're upset about, there's a right way and a wrong way to express your being upset in this country and violence -- violence against law enforcement, destruction of property -- is not it. ...That's what the rule of law is about."

During a question-and-answer period after a speech Wray delivered on the threat China poses to U.S. interests, Reagan Library executive director John Heubusch called the assault on the Capitol a "tragedy" and praised the FBI's determined effort to hunt down those responsible.

"At the same time, there's a concern out there in a community that a lot of bad actors did similar things, whether it be to federal courthouses or police headquarters across the United States in the summer of 2020," added Heubusch, a former executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Wray insisted that it was "absolutely" true that the FBI was moving as aggressively to investigate crimes related to the 2020 unrest as it is with offenses committed at the Capitol last Jan. 6

"We have in both instances opened hundreds of investigations -- in both. We've made hundreds of arrests -- in both. We've used nearly all 56 of our field offices, including our joint terrorism task forces -- in both. We've used investigative publicity, most wanted posters, and things like that -- in both," the FBI chief said. "We're aggressively pursuing both."

However, Wray noted that the Capitol attack was particularly disturbing because it occurred during the planned certification of the presidential contest and while the building was occupied by staff and lawmakers.

People were beaten on the street during the Republican National Convention.

He also pointed to challenges in the summer 2020 cases that haven't affected the Capitol riot investigation. "In the Jan. 6 instance, it happened in broad daylight and was ... photographed extensively, people's faces eminently visible, and involved a fairly unmistakable breach and entry into the Congress while they were in the middle of conducting one of their most sacred responsibilities. Contrast that from a lot of what we saw over the summer was happening under cover of darkness, with people's faces concealed, often attacking buildings that might not be federal property, in some cases a courthouse, but not while people were in operation."

Note their big explanation for why they let off the BLM and antifa rioters who attacked the courthouses is that they mostly did so at night, when they were unoccupied.

But also note that when the BLM arsonist burned down a store that was occupied and killed a man, the federal prosecutor said, "No big deal, boo, I get it, it was an accident, and you just wanted to protest The Man."

Doesn't seem like the "occupied" status of a building really matter, huh?

It's all about whether your crime is one the Ruling Class approves of and in fact encourages and supports.

Wray's remarks generally tracked with explanations federal prosecutors have given in court in response to motions Jan. 6 defendants have filed complaining of selective prosecution by the Biden administration. None of those motions has been successful, although one federal judge in Washington -- Trump appointee Trevor McFadden -- has publicly criticized the Justice Department for being too lenient toward protesters who caused property damage in Washington in the summer of 2020.

They also attacked people at, for example, the Republican National Convention.

I don't remember any concerns about attempting a "coup" there, even though that was in fact an attempt to intimidate people from going forward with a vital step of the political process -- nominating a candidate for president.

"I think the U.S. Attorney's Office would have more credibility if it was evenhanded in its concern about riots and mobs in this city," McFadden said at a sentencing hearing for a Capitol riot defendant last October.

However, some of McFadden's colleagues have rejected the comparison, insisting that some people in Washington did face serious charges for rioting that summer and that the two situations are not comparable.

"Some have compared what took place on Jan. 6 with other protests that took place throughout the country through the past year and have suggested that the Capitol rioters are being treated unfairly," said Judge Tanya Chutkan, an appointee of President Barack Obama, during another Capitol riot sentencing last year. "I flatly disagree."

McFadden hasn't withdrawn his criticism and, in a December ruling, he expressed astonishment that the federal government had dropped many of the charges against rioters in Portland, Ore., including some accused of assaulting federal officers. "Rarely has the Government shown so little interest in vigorously prosecuting those who attack federal officers," he wrote.

Liars. Perjurers.

Crooked cops are the worst criminals and deserve the worst penalties.

posted by Ace at 04:02 PM

| Access Comments